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AMERICAN 

BIBLICAL QUARTERLY. 

JANUARY 1, 1864. 

No. I. 

ON DANIEL. 



BY 

LEICESTER A. SAWYER, 

TRANSLATOR OP TEE SCRIPTURES, &C. ^ 



BOSTON: 
LEICESTER A. SAWYER, 

AT WALKEE, WISE & CO'S, 245 WASHINGTON STREET. 



DANIEL,^ 



WITH ITS 



APOCRYPHAL ADDITIONS. 



TRANSLATED, ARRANGED, AND THE PRINCIPAL QUESTIONS 
OP ITS INTERPRETATION CONSIDERED. 



BY 

LEICESTER AMBROSE SAWYER, 

TRANSLATOR OF THE SCRIPTURES, ETC. 






BOSTON: 
WALKER, WISE AND COMPANY, 

245 Washington Street. 
1864. 









Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 

LEICESTER AMBROSE SAWYER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



^r4 4 o 



ELECTROTYPED AT THE 
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. 



CONTENTS. 

PART I. 

Hebrew Series. 

Page 

Story I. Captivity, early piety, abstinence, superior scholar- 
ship, and promotion of Daniel and his three friends, . . 7 

Story II. Daniel's vision of the four kingdoms till the end of 

the world [aion], and its interpretation by Gabriel, ... 8 

Story III. Daniel's prayer, and the oracle of 70 weeks re- 
ceived from Gabriel, 11 

Story IV. Daniel's fast of three weeks, and an Apocalypse of 

the latter days received from an angel, 14 

PART II. 

Mixed Series. 

Story V. Nebuchadnezzar's forgotten dream of the four 

kingdoms, and the kingdom of God, 21 

Story VI. Nebuchadnezzar's gold image, and the three pious 

children in the fiery furnace, 25 

PART in. 

Chaldee Series. 

Story VTI. Nebuchadnezzar's edict concerning his madness, 

its causes, accompaniments, and cure, 31 

Story VIII. Belshazzar's feast, sin, and punishment, ... 35 

(3) 



4 CONTENTS. 

STORY IX. Conspiracy against Daniel, his deliverance from 

the lions, and the destruction of the conspirators, ... 38 

Story X. Daniel's dream of four earthly kingdoms, and a 

final heavenly one, and its interpretation by an angel, . . 40 

PAET IV. 

Greek Series. 

Story XI. Susanna, or Daniel delivering an innocent woman 

from false accusers, 43 

Story XII. Bel and the Dragon, or Daniel destroying Baby- 
lonian idols, and saved from the lions' den, 47 

CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Chapter I. Contents and subject matter of the book ; its' 

language and natural divisions, 51 

Chapter II. Assumed dates of Daniel ; its defects as a biog- 
raphy ; titles of the book ; slight grounds on which it is 
referred to Daniel and his times ; and the account of its 
being shown to Alexander the Great, 55 

Chapter III. Argument for the late authorship of Daniel 
from its late position in the Hebrew canon, and unsuc- 
cessful attempts to invalidate it, 60 

Chapter IV. Statement of Josephus analyzed and harmo- 
nized perfectly with the present canon and arrangement ; 
his testimony distinguished from his opinions, and his 
later admissions to Apion, 68 

Chapter V. The Apocrypha ; different estimates of it by Cath- 
olics and Protestants ; its value, and its negative evidence 
against the historic character of Daniel and his book, . .78 



CONTENTS. O 

Chapter VI. New Testament authority for making Daniel 
a prophet and the author of his book, shown to be unre- 
liable.. 83 

Chapter VII. The Chaldee language of the Stories is a con- 
clusive proof that those of the Mixed and Chaldee Series 
are not productions of Daniel or his times, 90 

Chapter VIII. Proximate dates of the different parts of 

Daniel, 94 

Chapter IX. Character and objects of the book of Daniel, . 96 

Chapter X. Importance of interpreting Daniel correctly ; 
dark sayings of the ancients; methods of common inter- 
preters, 101 

Chapter XL Questioning old opinions no cause of alarm ; 
infallible interpretation and inspiration considered ; cer- 
tain principles of knowledge, 108 

Chapter XII. Geographical notices of Chaldaea, Assyria, 

Syria, Egypt, and the Greeks, 113 

Chapter XIII. Ethnic and chronologic introduction to Dan- 
iel, and to a knowledge of its times, 116 

Chapter XIV. Historic notices of the Jews, from the close 
of the Babylonian exile, 538 B. C, to the destruction of 
Jerusalem, A. D. 70, 127 

Chapter XV. Notes on Story I., 136 

NOTICE BY THE PUBLISHERS, 142 

1 * 



TO THE READER. 



It is not a work of supererogation to gather up and concentrate 
the light that is shed on the Scriptures by the immense labors of 
the last 300 years ; still less, to subject accredited opinions on the 
Scriptures to new trials, and test the validity of traditionary judg- 
ments from the earliest periods. If correct, the severest scrutiny 
will place them in clearer and stronger lights, and enhance their 
credit and usefulness. Inquiry and scrutiny cannot harm the 
truth ; they can only serve it, and are only formidable to error. 
Truth courts inquiry, defies skepticism, and is stronger and clearer 
in proportion to the thoroughness with which it is examined. 

Truth is a cardinal principle of religion, and belongs preemi- 
nently to Christianity. Christ taught his doctrine, whatever it was, 
as a system of right thinking and right doing. Truth is orthodox 
and evangelical. No partial systems have a right to monopolize 
these titles ; they belong to all the disciples of religious truth and 
practical righteousness, and may not be wrested from them. 
True thinking is always right, and new truth is always evan- 
gelic ; it is good news, and contributes to do good. Good men 
anticipated, from the earliest times, that knowledge would one day 
cover the earth as the waters do the ocean ; and the star of science 
is preeminently in the ascendant now. The times are auspicious 
for the indefinite progress of truth. Knowledge does not travel at 
its ancient slow pace ; the railroad and steamboat speed, which 
have expedited other travel, and the lightning wing of the tele- 
graph, with the kindred improvements of the age, have put intel- 
lectual and spiritual conquests in the power of single generations, 
which anciently required ages. 

THE AUTHOR. 

Boston, January 1, 1864. 

(6) 



DANIEL. 



PART I. 

HEBREW SERIES. 

STORY I. 1. 

Captivity, early piety, abstinence, superior scholarship, 
and promotion of Daniel and his three friends. 

1 Ix the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of 
Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel [Babylon] to 
Jerusalem, and besieged it. And Adonai gave into his 
hand Jehoiakim king of Judah, and all the vessels of the 
house of God, and he brought them to the land of Shinar, 
to the house of his god, and the implements he brought 
to the treasury of his god. 1 : 1, 2. ♦ 

2 And the king commanded Ashpenaz chief of his 
eunuchs to bring [some] of the sons of Israel, both of the 
royal family and of the nobles, children in whom there 
was no blemish, and of fair countenance, and instructed in 
all wisdom, and knowing knowledge, and understanding 
science, and who had ability to stand in the king's 
palace, and to teach them the books [literature] and 
tongue of the Chasdim. And the king appointed them a 
daily allowance of the king's rich food, and of the wine 
which he drank, and [was] to nourish them three years; 
and at the end of them, they were to stand before the 
king. And there were among them, of the sons of Judah, 
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And the prince 
of the eunuchs gave them names, and named Daniel Bel- 

(7) 



8 HEBREW SERIES. 

teshazzar, and Hananiah Shadrach, and Mishael Meshak, 
and Azariah Abednego. 3-7. 

3 And Daniel determined not to defile himself with the 
king's rich food, nor with the wine which he drank; and 
he asked the prince of the eunuchs that he might not de- 
file himself; and God gave Daniel kindness and pity be- 
fore the prince of the eunuchs ; but the prince of the 
eunuchs said to Daniel, I am afraid of my lord the king, 
who has appointed your food and drink ; for why should 
he see your faces more stern than the children of your 
age ? And you would endanger my head to the king. 
Then Daniel said to the steward whom the prince of the 
eunuchs had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, 
and Azariah, Try, I pray you, your servants ten days, and 
let them give us of seeds to eat, and water to drink; then 
let them see our appearances, and the appearance of the 
children who eat the king's rich food ; and as you see, deal 
with your servants. And he heard to them in this thing, 
and tried them ten days ; and at the end of ten days their 
appearance was seen to be good, and they were fatter in 
flesh than any of the children who ate the king's rich food ; 
and the steward took away their rich food, and wine which 
they drank, and gave them seeds. s-16. 

4 And God gave these four children knowledge and 
understanding in all books [literature] and wisdom, and 
Daniel understood all visions and dreams. And at the 
end of the days when the king commanded that they 
should bring them in, the prince of the eunuchs brought 
them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king examined 
them, and there was not found among them all [any] like 
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah ; and they stood 
before the king ; and in every matter of wisdom [and] 
understanding which the king asked of them, he found 
[them] ten hands above all the scribes [and] enchanters 
who were in all his kingdom ; and Daniel continued till 
the first year of Cyrus king [of Persia]. 17-21. 



STORY II. 



STORY II. 



DanieTs vision of the four kingdoms, till the end of the 
worlds and its interpretation by Gabriel. 

1 In the third rear of the reign of Belshazzar the kino- 
[of Persia] ; a vision appeared to me, — I am Daniel, — 
after what appeared to me at the beginning. And I saw 
a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was in 
Shushan the royal city, which is in Elam the province. 
And I saw a vision, and was by the river Ulai [Choaspes]. 
And I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram stood 
before the river, and he had two horns, and the two horns 
were high, and the first was higher than the second, and 
the higher came up last. 8: 1-4. 

2 I saw the ram pushing towards the west, and towards 
the north, and towards the south, and no animal could 
stand before him, and none [was able] to deliver from his 
hand; and he did as he pleased, and became great. And 
I considered, and behold, a mighty goat came from the 
west over the face of all the earth, and touched not the 
earth; and the goat had a conspicuous horn between his 
eyes. And he came to the ram that had horns, which I 
saw standing before the river, and he ran against him in 
the fury of his power; and I saw him smite beside the 
ram, and he was indignant against him; and he smote the 
ram, and broke his two horns ; and there was no power in 
the ram to stand before him; and he cast him on the 
earth, and stamped on him; and there was none that 
could deliver the ram from his hand. And the mighty 
goat became very great ; and when he was strong, his 
great horn was broken, and four conspicuous horns came 
up in its place towards the four winds of heaven. 5-8. 

3 And from one of them came forth a little horn, and 
became very great towards the south, and towards the 



10 HEBREW SEJRIES. 

east, and towards the beauty [of all lands]. And it be- 
came great to the host of heaven, and cast down some of 
the host to the earth, and some of the stars, and stamped 
on them. And it magnified itself to the prince of the 
host, and the continual sacrifice was taken away from him, 
and the base of his sanctuary cast down ; and a host was 
given against the continual sacrifice, on account of trans- 
gression, and truth was cast down to the earth, but it 
practised and prospered. 9-12. 

4 And I heard a holy one speak, and a holy one said to 
a certain one that spoke, For how long is the vision of 
the continual sacrifice and the desolating transgression, to 
give both the sanctuary and the host [of heaven] to be 
trodden down ? And he said to me, Till evenings 
[and] mornings 2300 ; then the sanctuary shall be 
cleansed. 13, 14. 

5 And it came to pass when I saw the vision, — I am 
Daniel, — then I sought understanding ; and behold, there 
stood before me like the appearance of a man [of rank] ; 
and I heard the voice of a man between the Ulai, and he 
called and said, Gabriel, make this [man] understand the 
vision. Then he came beside where I stood, and when he 
came I was afraid, and fell on my face ; and he said to me, 
Understand, for the vision [relates] to the time of the 
end. And when he spoke to me I was in a deep sleep on 
my face on the earth; and he touched me, and set me up 
on my feet, and said, Behold, I make you know what shall 
be at the end of the indignation, for the end is at the 
appointed [time]. The ram which you saw with two 
horns is the king of Media and Persia, and the mighty 
goat the king of Greece ; and the great horn between his 
eyes, the first king [Alexander]. And [as] it was broken, 
and four stood up in its place, four kings from the 
nation shall stand up, but not with his strength ; and at the 
end of their kingdom, when transgressors shall have com- 



story m. 11 

pleted [their term], a king [Antiochus IV., 175 B. C] shall 
stand up with a stern countenance and understanding dark 
sayings ; and he shall be strong with his strength and with 
strength not his, and shall destroy wonderfully, and prosper 
and do, and destroy mighty ones, and people of holy ones. 
And by his intelligence he shall also cause deceit to prosper 
in his hand ; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and 
in peace destroy many, and stand up against the prince 
of princes, and be broken without hand. And as to the 
vision of the mornings and evenings, which has been told, 
this is the meaning. But do you seal up the vision, for it 
is for [many] days. And I Daniel fainted, and was sick 
[some] days [perhaps a year] ; then I arose and did the 
king's business, and was astonished at the vision, and 
none understood it. 15-27. 

STORY III. • 9. 

DanieVs prayer, and the oracle of 70 iceeks received from 

Gabriel. 

1 In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, of the 
race of Media, who ruled over the kingdom of the Chas- 
dim, in the first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by 
the Scriptures the number of years concerning which the 
word of Jeva came to Jeremiah the prophet, to fulfil the 
desolations of Jerusalem 70 years. And I set my face to 
Adonai the God, to seek [him] by prayer and supplica- 
tions, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes, and prayed to 
Jeva my God, and confessed, and said, — 9 : 1-4. 

2 I pray thee, Adonai the Mighty one, great and terri- 
ble, keeping the covenant and the kindness for those that 
love him and keep his commandments ; we have sinned, 
and done wickedly, and transgressed, and rebelled, and 
departed from thy commandments and judgments. And 
we have not obeyed thy servants the prophets who spoke 



12 HEBREW SERIES. 

in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, 
and to all the people of the land. To thee, Adonai, be- 
longs righteousness, but to us confusion of faces as at this 
day, to the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusa- 
lem, and to all Israel, near and remote, in all lands to 
which thou hast driven them for their trespass which 
they have trespassed against thee. 9: 5-7. 

3 To us, Adonai, belongs confusion of faces, to our kings, 
to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned 
against thee. To Adonai our God belong mercies and 
forgiveness, because we rebelled against him, and obeyed 
not the voice of Jeva our God, to walk in his law which 
he set before us by the hand of his servants the prophets. 
And all Israel transgressed thy law, and departed, not to 
obey thy voice, and thou didst pour out upon us the curse 
and oath which are written in the law of Moses servant 
of God, because we sinned against him. And he estab- 
lished his words which he spoke against us, and against 
our judges w r ho judged us, to bring on us a great evil, for 
it has not been done under all the heavens as was done 
against Jerusalem. As it is written in the law of Moses, 
all this evil came on us, and we propitiated not the face 
of Jeva our God, to turn from our wickedness, and to 
have a wise regard for thy truth. And Jeva watched for 
the evil, and brought it on us ; for Jeva our God is 
righteous in all his w^orks which he has done, and we 
obeyed not his voice. 9-14. 

4 And now, Adonai our God, who didst bring out thy 
people from the land of Egypt with a strong hand, and 
didst make thee a name as at this day, we have sinned, 
we have done wickedly. Adonai, according to all thy 
righteousness, let thy anger, I pray thee, turn away, and 
thy wrath from thy city Jerusalem, the mountain of thy 
sanctuary, because for our sins and the wickednesses of 
our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are a reproach to 



STORY HI. 13 

all about us. And now hear, our God, the prayer of thy 
servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine 
on thy sanctuary, which is desolate, for the sake of my 
Lord. Incline, my God, thy ear and hear ; open thy eyes 
and see our desolations, and the city that is called by thy 
name ; for not on account of our righteousness do we pour 
out our supplications before thee, but on account of thy 
great mercies. Adonai, hear; Adonai, forgive ; attend and 
do ; defer not for thy sake, my God, for thy name is called 
on thy city and on thy people. 15-19. 

5 And while I was yet speaking and praying, and con- 
fessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and pour- 
ing out my supplication before Jeva my God, concerning 
the mountain of the sanctuary of my God, even while I 
was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I saw in 
vision at the beginning, being made to fly swiftly, touched 
me at about the time of the evening bread offering. 2 : 5. 
And he made me understand, and spoke with me, and 
said, Daniel, now I have come to give you understanding. 
At the beginning of your supplication the command went 
forth, and I have come to show, for you are greatly be- 
loved; both understand the word and understand the 
vision. 20-23. 

6 Seventy weeks are determined on your people and 
on the city of your sanctuary, to restrain the transgression, 
and seal up sins, and expiate wickedness, and bring in the 
righteousness of ages, and seal up vision and prophet, and 
anoint a most holy sanctuary. And know and understand, 
from the going forth of a command to restore and build 
Jerusalem to Christ the Prince shall be seven weeks ; and 
in sixty-two weeks shall the street and trench again be 
built, and there shall be times of distress. And after sixty- 
two weeks Christ shall be cut off, and none shall be for 
him, and the people of a prince that shall come shall 
destroy both the city and the sanctuary ; and its end shall 

2 



14 HEBREW SERIES. 

be with a flood ; and till the end [of the world] a war of 
desolations is determined. And he shall make a strong 
covenant with many for one week, and half a week shall 
he cause the sacrifice and bread offering to cease, and on 
a battlement shall be the abominations of the destroyer, 
even till the consummation and decreed [punishment] 
is poured out on the desolate. 24-27. 

STORY IV. 10-12. 

Daniel's fast of three weeks, and an Apocalypse of the 
latter days received from an angel. 

1 In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia, a word was 
revealed to Daniel, whose name is Belteshazzar, and the 
word was true and host great; and he understood the 
word, and understanding [was given] him by the appear- 
ance. 10: 1. 

2 In those days I Daniel mourned three weeks. I ate 
no pleasant bread, nor meat nor wine came into my 
mouth ; and I practised no anointing till the completion 
of the three weeks. And on the twenty-fourth day of 
the first month I was on the bank of the great river Ti- 
gris, and lifted up my eyes and saw, and beheld, a man 
clothed with linen, and his loins were girded with fine 
gold of Uphaz, and his body was like a topaz, and his face 
like the appearance of lightning, and his eyes like lamps 
of fire, and his arms and legs like the eye of polished 
brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a mul- 
titude; and I saw — I am Daniel — I saw the appearance 
alone, and the men who were with me saw not the ap- 
pearance : and I remained alone and saw this great ap- 
pearance ; and there remained no strength in me, and my 
beauty was turned to destruction upon me, and I retained 
no strength. 2-8. 

3 And I heard the voice of his words, and when I heard 



STORY IV. 15 

the voice of his words, I was in a deep sleep on my face, 
and my face to the ground. And behold, a hand touched 
me, and set me on my knees and the palms of my hands. 
And he said to me, Daniel, precious man, understand the 
words which I speak to you, and stand on your feet, for 
now I am sent to you ; and when he spoke, I stood trem- 
bling. And he. said to me, Fear not, Daniel, for from the 
first day that you applied your mind to understand and 
to afflict yourself before your God, your words were heard, 
and I came for your words. But a prince of the kingdom 
of Persia withstood me twenty-one days ; and behold, 
Michael, one of the first princes, came to help me, and I 
was left there [victor] by the side of the kings of Persia, 
and came to make you understand what shall happen to 
your people in the latter days ; for yet the vision is for 
[many] days. 9-14. 

4 And when he spoke these words to me, I set my face 
to the ground, and was dumb. And behold, [one] like 
the likeness of the sons of man touched my lips, and I 
opened my mouth and said to him that stood before me, 
My lord, by the appearance my pains have returned upon 
me, and I have retained no strength. How can the ser- 
vant of this my lord speak with this my lord? and hence- 
forth no strength remained in me, nor did my breath 
remain in me. Then again touched me [one] like the ap- 
pearance of a man, and strengthened me. And he said to 
me, Fear not, precious man ; peace be to you ; be very 
strong. And when he had spoken to me I was strength- 
ened, and said, Let my lord speak, for thou hast strength- 
ened me. And he said, Do you know why I have come 
to you? And now I return to fight with the prince of 
Persia; and [when] I go forth, behold, the prince of 
Greece will come, but I will show you what is written in 
the writing of truth; and there is none that holds with 
me in these things but Michael your prince. And as for 



16 HEBREW SERIES. 

me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, my place was to 
strengthen and support him. 15. 11 ; 2. 

5 And now I [will] show you the truth. Behold, yet 
three kings [Cambyses, Suierdis, and Darius L] stand up 
for Persia, and the fourth shall be richer than all ; and 
when he has strengthened himself with his riches, he shall 
excite all against the kingdom of Greece. And a mighty 
king [Alexander] shall stand up, and rule with great do- 
minion, and do as he pleases ; and when he has stood up, 
his kingdom shall be broken, and divided to the four 
winds of heaven; and not to his descendants, nor accord- 
ing to his dominion with which he ruled, but his kingdom 
shall be plucked up, and be for others besides these. 3, 4. 

6 And a king of the south [Ptolemy I.] shall be strong, 
and another of his princes [Seleucus] shall be stronger 
than he, and shall rule a dominion, and his kingdom 
be great. And at the end of years they shall form an alli- 
ance, and the [Berennice] daughter of the king of the 
south [Ptolemy II.] shall go to the king of the north [An- 
tiochus II.], to make peace, but shall not retain strength of 
arm, and his arm shall not stand ; and she shall be given 
up, and those that brought her, and he that begat her, and 
he that strengthened her in [those] times. 5, 6. 

7 But a sprout shall stand up from her roots in his 
place [Ptolemy III.], and shall go with a force, and shall 
go to the fortresses of the king of the north, and he shall 
deal with them, and be strong; and their gods, with their 
castings and precious vases of silver and gold, shall he 
carry with captives to Egypt ; and he shall stand up more 
years than the king of the north. 7-9. 

8 And the king of the south shall go to his kingdom, 
and return to his land ; and his sons [Seleucus III. and 
Antiochus III.] shall be excited, and assemble a multitude 
of great forces, and one [Antiochus III.] shall come with 
power, and overflow, and pass over, and return, and be 



STORY IV. 17 

excited to [the extent of] his strength. And the king of 
the south shall be angry, and go forth and fight with the 
king of the north, and he shall set forth a great multitude, 
and the multitude shall be given into his hand ; and he 
shall take the multitude, and his heart be lifted up ; and 
he shall cause ten thousand to fall, and not be strength- 
ened. 10-12. 

9 And the king of the north [Antiochus III.] shall 
return and set forth a multitude greater than the former ; 
and at the end of years he shall surely go with a great 
force and great riches ; and in those times many shall 
stand up against the king of the south, and sons of the 
violent ones of your people shall be raised up to establish 
the vision, and shall fall ; and the king of the north shall 
go and raise a mound, and take fortified cities, and the 
arms of the south shall not stand, nor the peojDle of his 
chosen ones; and there shall be no strength to stand; 
and he that comes against him shall do according to his 
will, and none shall stand before him; and he shall stand 
up in the land of beauty, and destruction be in his hand. 
And he shall set his face to go with the strength of all 
his kingdom, and upright ones with him ; and he shall do 
[according to his pleasure] ; and a daughter of women 
[his daughter Cleopatra] shall he give him to destroy her; 
but she shall not stand up, nor be for him. 13-17. 

10 Then he shall set his face against the islands, and 
take many ; but a prince shall cause his reproach to cease, 
and his reproach shall not return to him, and he shall set 
his face to the fortresses of his land, and stumble and fall, 
and not be found, is, 19. 

11 And there shall stand up in his place one who shall 
send around an exactor of the glory of his kingdom [Se- 
leucus IV.] ; and in a few days he shall be broken, but not 
in anger nor in war. 20. 

12 And in his place shall stand up a despicable one 

2* 



18 HEBREW SERIES. 

[Antiochus IV.], and they shall not put on him the glory 
of the kingdom, but he shall come quietly and take the 
kingdom with flatteries, and arms of a flood shall be over- 
flowed from before him, and broken, and the covenant 
prince. And from treaties made with him he shall act 
deceitfully, and go up, and be strong with a small nation. 
And he shall go quietly into the richest parts of provinces, 
and do that which his fathers did not, nor his fathers' 
fathers; he shall divide plunder, and spoil, and riches to 
them, and form his schemes against fortified places, and 
[continue] to the time [of the end]. 21-24. 

13 Then he shall excite his strength and mind against 
the king of the south, with a great and very strong army, 
and the king of the south shall be excited to war with a 
great and strong army exceedingly ; but he shall not stand, 
for they shall form schemes against him ; and those that 
eat his rich food shall crush him, and his army shall over- 
flow, but many shall fall killed. And as to the two kings, 
it shall be in their heart to do evil, and at one table they 
shall speak a lie, but it shall not prosper; but yet the end 
[will be] at a set time. And he shall return to his land 
with great riches, and his mind be against the holy cove- 
nant, and he shall do, and return to his land. At the ap- 
pointed time he shall return, and go against the south ; 
but it shall not be in the latter case as in the former one. 
And ships from Kittim [Greece] shall come against him, 
and he shall be depressed, and return, and be indignant 
against the holy covenant, and do [wickedly], and again 
have intelligence with those that forsake the holy cove- 
nant. And arms from him [Apollonius] shall stand up, 
and profane the sanctuary of strength, and take away the 
continual sacrifice, and set up the desolating abomination ; 
and those that transgress the covenant shall he propitiate 
with flatteries ; but the people that know their God shall 
be strong and do wonders; and those that teach the 
people wisdom shall make many understand, but they shal} 



STORY IV. 19 

fall by sword, and fire, and captivity, and plunder [many] 
days ; and when they fall, they shall be helped by a few, 
but many shall cleave to them with flatteries; and [some] 
of those that teach the people wisdom shall fall, to try 
them and purify [them], and make [them] white, till the 
time of the end ; for it is yet for an ap]3ointed time. 25-35. 

14 And the king shall do according to his will, and ex- 
alt himself, and magnify himself above every mighty one 
and the Most mighty one. He shall speak great things 
[blasphemies], and prosper till the indignation is finished ; 
for the determined [must] be done. And he shall not 
have intelligence against the God of his fathers [Zeus], 
nor against the desire of women [Artemis], nor against 
any god, but shall magnify himself above all ; and shall 
honor the god of fortresses in his place, and shall honor 
a god whom his lathers did not know : gold, and silver, 
and precious stones, and delicacies. And in his strong 
fortresses he shall deal with a strange god. Whom he 
recognizes he shall greatly honor, and make them rule 
over many, and divide the land for a price ; and at the 
time of the end the king of the south shall push him, and 
the king of the north shall be excited against him, with 
chariots, and horsemen, and many shrps, and shall over- 
flow and pass over, and go into the land of beauty ; and 
many [lands] shall fall, but these shall be delivered from 
his hand : Edom and Moab, and the beginnings of the 
sons of Ammon. And he shall stretch forth his hand on 
the lands, and the land of Egypt shall not escape ; and he 
shall rule over the hidden treasures of gold and silver, 
and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the 
Lybians and Ethiopians shall be under his feet ; and re- 
ports shall trouble him from the east and north, and he 
shall go forth in great anger to kill and destroy many ; 
and he shall plant his palace tents between seas against 
the mountain of the beauty of the sanctuary, and come to 
his end, and none shall help him. 36-45. 



20 HEBREW SERIES. 

15 And at that time Michael shall stand up, the great 
prince who stands up over the sons of your people ; and 
there shall be a time of trouble, such as has not been since 
there was a nation to that time ; and at that time your 
people shall be saved, every one that is found written in 
the book. And many of those that sleep in the dust of 
the earth shall awake ; some to life eternal, and some to 
reproaches and eternal abhorrence; but those that teach 
wisdom $hall shine as the brightness of the firmament, 
and those that make many righteous as the stars forever 
and ever. But as for you, Daniel, close up the words, and 
seal up the book, to the time of the end ; many shall go 
about, and knowledge be increased. 12: 1-4. 

16 And I Daniel saw, and behold, two others stood, 
one on this bank of the river, and the other on that bank 
of the river. And [one] said to the man clothed with 
fine linen, who was on the waters of the river, How long 
shall it be to the end of the wonders? And I heard the 
man clothed with fine linen, who was on the waters of 
the river, and he lifted up his right hand and his left to 
heaven, and swore by him that lives forever, that it shall 
be for a time and times and a half; and when he has 
finished scattering the hand of the holy people, all these 
things shall be finished. And I heard, but understood 
not, and said, My Lord, what shall be the end of these 
things? And he said, Go, Daniel, for the words are 
closed up and sealed, to the time of the end. Many shall 
be purified and made white, but the wicked shall do 
wickedly ; and none of the wicked shall understand, but 
the wise shall understand. And from the time of the 
taking away of the continual sacrifice, and setting up the 
desolating abomination, shall be 1290 days. Blessed is 
he that waits and comes to 1335 days ; but as for you, 
go till the end ; you shall both rest [die], and stand [rise] 
up for your lot at the end of the days. 5-13. 



STORY 1. 21 

PAET II. 

MIXED SERIES. 
STORY I. [V.] 2. 

Nebuchadnezzar'* s forgotten dream of the four kingdoms 
and the kingdom of God, 

1 In the second year of the reign of Xebuchadnezzar, 
Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, and his spirit was 
troubled, and his sleep departed from him. And the king 
commanded that they should call the scribes, and en- 
chanters, and magi, and Chasdim, to show to the king his 
dreams ; and they came and stood before the king. And 
the king said to them, I have dreamed a dream, and my 
spirit is troubled to know the dream. And the Chasdim 
said to the king, in Syriac [Aramaean, or Biblical Chal- 
dee], King, live forever. Tell your servants the dream, 
and we will show the interpretation. The king answered 
and said to the Chasdim, The thing has gone from me. 
If you will not make known to me the dream and its in- 
terpretation, you shall be cut to pieces, and your houses 
made a dunghill. But if you show the dream and its 
interpretation, you shall receive a gift and present, and a 
great reward from me. Therefore show me the dream 
and its interpretation. 2 : i-e. 

2 They answered a second time, and said, King, let the 
dream be told to your servants, and we will show the in- 
terpretation. The king answered and said, Of a truth, I 
know that you would gain time, because you see that the 
thing has gone from me; but if you will not make known 
to me the dream, this is your purpose ; and you have de- 
vised a false and corrupt word to speak before me, till the 
time is changed. But if you tell me the dream, then I 



22 MIXED SERIES. 

shall know that you can show me the interpretation. The 
Chasdim answered before the king, and said, There is not 
a mortal on earth that can show the king's matter ; there- 
fore no king, rab, or ruler has demanded such a thing as 
this of any scribe, enchanter, or Chasdian. The thing 
which the king has demanded is rare, and none can 
show it to the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is 
not with flesh. Ml. 

3 On this account the king was angry and very indig- 
nant, and commanded that they should destroy all the 
wise men of Babel [Babylon] ; and the law went forth 
that all the wise men of Babylon should be killed ; and 
they sought for Daniel and his companions to kill 
[them]. 12, 13. 

4 Then Daniel answered Arioch, chief of the king's exe- 
cutioners, who went forth to kill the wise men of Babylon, 
wisely and discreetly. He answered and said to Arioch, 
the king's ruler, Why is this severe decree passed from 
the king ? Then Arioch made the thing known to Daniel ; 
and Daniel went up and asked the king that he would 
give him time to show the interpretation to the king. 
Then went Daniel to his house, and made the thing 
known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, 
that they might ask mercies of the God of heaven con- 
cerning this secret, and Daniel and his companions perish 
not with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. Then was 
the secret revealed to Daniel in visions of the night ; then 
Daniel blessed the God of heaven. Daniel answered and 
said, Let the name of God be blessed, from age to age, for 
wisdom and might, which are his. And he changes times 
and seasons ; he takes away kings, and sets up kings ; he 
gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who 
understand science ; he reveals the deep and concealed ; 
he knows what is in darkness, and light dwells with him. 
I confess and praise thee, God of my fathers, for thou hast 



STORY I. 23 

given me wisdom and might, and now hast made known 
to me that which we asked of thee ; thou has made known 
to me the king's matter. 14-2.3. 

5 Therefore Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had 
appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon ; he went 
and said thus to him, Destroy not the wise men of Baby- 
lon. Bring me up before the king, and I will show the 
king the interpretation. 24, 25. 

6 Then Arioch brought up Daniel with haste before the 
king, and said thus to him : I have found a man, of the 
sons of the captives of Judah, who will make known the 
interpretation to the king. The king answered and said 
to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Are you aHe to 
make known the dream which I saw, and its interpreta- 
tion ? Daniel answered before the king, and said, The 
secret which the king has demanded, none of the wise 
men, enchanters, scribes, diviners, can show to the king- 
but there is a God in heaven that reveals secrets, and has 
made known to king Nebuchadnezzar what is to be in after 
days. Your dream, and the vision of your head on your 
bed, were these : As for you, king, your thoughts came 
up, on your bed as to what should be hereafter ; and he 
that reveals secrets made known to you what shall be ; 
and as for me, not for any wisdom that is in me more than 
in any living one, is this secret revealed to me ; but on 
[this] account, that the interpretation may be made known 
to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your 
mind. 26-30. 

7 You, king, saw, and behold, there was a great image, 
This image was a Rab, and his excellent brightness rose 
up before you, and his appearance was terrible. This was 
the image : his head was of fine gold ; his breast and arms, 
silver ; his belly and thighs, brass ; his legs, iron ; his feet, 
part iron, and part clay. You saw, till a stone was cut 
without hands, and it smote the image on his feet, which 



24 MIXED SERIES. 

were of iron and clay, and beat them to powder. Then 
were beaten together the iron, clay, brass, silver, and gold, 
and became like the dust of a summer threshing floor; 
and a wind bore them away, and there was no place found 
for them ; and the stone which smote the image, became a 
great mountain, and filled the whole earth. This is the 
dream, and the interpretation shall be told before the 
king. 31-30. 

8 You, king, are a king of kings ; for the God of heaven 
gave you a kingdom, riches, and power, and glory; and 
all places where sons of men dwell, the beasts of the 
earth, and the birds of heaven, has he given into your 
hand, and made you ruler over them all. You are that 
head of gold. And after you shall arise another kingdom 
[the Persian], inferior to you; and a third kingdom [of 
the Greeks] after that, of brass, which shall rule over all 
the earth ; and then shall be a fourth kingdom [Syria], 
strong as iron, inasmuch as iron beats fine and crushes all 
[things] ; and as iron which breaks all these, shall it break 
and crush. And as you saw the feet and toes, part pot- 
ter's clay and part iron, the kingdom shall be divided, 
and it shall have the strength of iron, inasmuch as you 
saw iron mixed with sherds cf clay. And as the toes of 
the feet are part iron and part clay, at the end, the king- 
dom shall be partly strong and partly weak. As you saw 
the iron mixed with sherds of clay, they shall mix with 
the race of man, and not cleave one to another, even "as 
iron cannot mix with clay. 37-43. 

9 And in the days of those kings shall the God of 
heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed ; 
nor shall the kingdom be left to another people; it shall 
crush and destroy all these kingdoms, and stand forever. 
Inasmuch as you saw a stone cut from a mountain without 
hands, and it crushed the iron, brass, clay, silver, and gold, 
the great God has made known to the king what shall be 



STORY II. 25 

hereafter ; and the dream is certain, and its interpretation 
sure. 44, 45. 

9 Then king Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, and wor- 
shipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer 
him a bread offering and sweet odors. The king answered 
Daniel and said, Of a truth, your God is God of gods, and 
Master of kings, and reveals secrets ; for you were able to 
reveal this secret. Then the king made Daniel a Rabbi, 
and gave him great gifts, and made him ruler of all the 
provinces of Babylon, and chief of the prefects over all 
the wise men of Babylon ; and Daniel asked the king, and 
he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego over the 
province of Babylon ; and Daniel sat in the king's gate. 

STORY II. [VI.] * 3. 

Nebuchadnezzar *s gold image, and the three pious children 
in the fiery furnace. 

1 King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold. Its 
height was ninety feet, and its breadth nine ; he set it up 
in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. And 
king Nebuchadnezzar sent to assemble the satraps, pre- 
fects, governors, judges, treasurers, counsellors, lawyers, 
and all the rulers of the province, to come to dedicate 
the image which king Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then 
were assembled the satraps, prefects and governors, 
judges, treasurers, counsellors, lawyers, and all the rulers 
of the province, to dedicate the image which king Nebu- 
chadnezzar had set up. And they stood up before the 
image which Nebuchadnezzar had set up; and a herald 
cried aloud, To you it is said, peoples, nations, and 
tongues, at the time when you hear the sound of cornet, 
pipe, harp, sambuca, lyre, bagpipe, and all kinds of music, 
fall down and worship the gold image which king 
Nebuchadnezzar has set up ; and whoever shall not fall 
3 



26 MIXED SERIES. 

down and worship, in that hour shall be cast into the 
midst of a burning fiery furnace. Wherefore, at the time 
when all peoples heard the sound of cornet, pipe, harp, 
sambuca, lyre, and all kinds of music, all peoples, nations, 
and tongues fell down [and] worshipped the gold image 
which king Nebuchadnezzar had set up. 3: 1-7. 

2 Wherefore, at that time [certain] Chasdim came near 
and accused the Jews. They answered and said to king 
Nebuchadnezzar, King, live for ages. You, king, made a 
decree that every man who hears the sound of cornet, 
pipe, harp, sambuca, lyre, and bagpipe, and all kinds of 
music, shall fall down and worship the gold image ; and 
whoever shall not fall down and worship shall be cast 
into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. There are Jews 
whom you have set over the service of the province of 
Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; these men 
regard not your decree, king; they serve not your gods, 
nor worship the gold image which you have set up. 8-12. 

3 Then Nebuchadnezzar, in excitement and anger, 
commanded that they should bring [forward] Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abednego. Then these men were brought 
before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to 
them, Is it on purpose, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, 
that you serve not our gods, nor worship the gold image 
which I have set up? Now, if you are ready at the time 
when you hear the sound of cornet, pipe, harp, sambuca, 
lyre, and bagpipe, and all kinds of music, you fall down 
and worship the image which I have made, [well]; but if 
you worship not, in that hour you shall be cast into the 
midst of a burning fiery furnace ; and who is that god that 
can deliver you from my hands ? 13-5. 

4 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and 
said to king Nebuchadnezzar, We have no need to answer 
you concerning this decree. If our God whom we serve 
[please], he is able to save us from the burning fiery 



STORY II. 27 

furnace, and he will save us from your hands, king; but 
if not, be it known to you, king, that we will not serve 
your gods, nor worship the gold image which you have 

Set Up. 16-81. 

5 Then king Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage, and 
the appearance of his face was changed against Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abednego. He answered, and commanded 
that they should heat the furnace seven times more than 
it was [customary] to heat it. And he commanded the 
mightiest men in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, 
and Abednego, [and] cast them into the burning fiery 
furnace. Then these men were bound in their pantaloons, 
tunics, and mantles, and [other] clothes, and cast into the 
midst of the burning fiery furnace. Wherefore, because 
the king's command was urgent, and the furnace exceed- 
ingly hot, the flame of the fire killed those men who took 
up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And those three 
men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell into the 
midst of the burning fiery furnace, bound. 16-23. 

6 And they walked about in the midst of the flame, 
praising God, tfnd blessing Kurios ; and Azariah, stand- 
ing with [them], prayed thus, and opening his mouth in 
the midst of the fire, said, — 

Blessed art thou, Kurios, God of our fathers, and to be 
praised, and thy name has been glorified for ages. Thou 
art righteous in all thou hast done, and all thy works 
true, and thy ways right, and all thy judgments truth; 
and thou hast executed the judgments of truth in all thou 
hast brought on us, and on Jerusalem, the holy city of our 
fathers ; for in truth and justice hast thou brought all 
these things on [us], on account of our sins ; for we 
sinned and did wickedly in departing from thee ; we 
sinned exceedingly in all things, and obeyed not thy 
commandments, nor kept [them], nor did as thou didst 
charge us, that it might be well with us; and all that 



28 MIXED SERIES. 

thou hast brought on us, and all that thou hast done to 
us, thou hast done in truth. 1-7. 

7 And thou didst deliver us into the hands of un- 
righteous enemies, and detestable rebels, and to the most 
unjust and wicked king in all the earth; and now it is 
not for us to open our mouth. We have been a shame 
and disgrace to thy servants, and to those that worship 
thee ; but do not give us up wholly, on account of thy 
name, nor break thy covenant, nor remove thy mercy 
from us, on account of Abraham, loved by thee, and of 
Isaac thy servant, and Israel thy saint, to whom thou 
didst say that thou wouldst multiply their descendants as 
the stars of heaven, and as the sand on the sea shore. For, 
Master, we have become least of all nations, and are low 
in all the earth to-day, on account of our sins. And there is 
not at this time ruler, or prophet, or governor, nor whole 
burnt offering, nor sacrifice, nor oblation, nor incense, nor 
place to make an offering before thee and find mercy ; but 
with a contrite soul and spirit of humility, let us be 
accepted. As with a whole burnt offering of rams and 
bulls, and with ten thousand fat lambs, so let our sacrifice 
be before thee to-day ; and let us go fully after thee, for 
there is no shame to those that trust in thee. 8-16. 

8 And now we follow with our whole heart, and fear 
thee, and seek thy face. Put us not to shame, but deal 
with us according to thy gentleness, and according to the 
multitude of thy mercies, and deliver us according to thy 
wonders, and give glory, Kurios, to thy name, and let all 
that injure thy servants be put to shame, and [cast down] 
confounded from all power, and their strength broken ; 
and let them know that thou art Kurios, God alone, and 
glorious in all the world. 17-21. 

9 And the king's servants that put them in ceased not 
heating the oven with naphtha, pitch, and tow, and fagots, 
and the flame extended 73 feet above the furnace, and it 



1 



STORY II. 29 

went about and burned those Chasdim whom it found 
about the furnace. And the angel of Kurios descended 
with those about Azariah in the furnace, and drove the 
flame of the fire out of the furnace, and made the midst 
of the furnace like a dewy whistling wind, and the fire 
did not touch them at all, nor occasion them pain or 
trouble. Then the three, as from one mouth, praised, and 
glorified, and blessed God in the furnace, saving, — 22-27. 

10 Blessed art tht>u, Kurios, the God of our fathers, and 
to be praised and greatly extolled for the ages ; and 
blessed be the holy name of thy glory, and praised and 
greatly extolled for all ages ; and blessed art thou in the 
temple of thy holy glory, and to be much sung and glori- 
fied for ages ; blessed art thou who lookest on the 
abysses sitting on cherubs, and to be praised and extolled 
for the ages; blessed art thou on the throne of thy king- 
dom, and to be much sung and praised for the ages ; 
blessed art thou in the firmament of heaven, and to be 
sung and glorified for the ages; bless Kurios, all the 
works of Kurios, sing and extol him for the ages ; bless 
Kurios, heaven, sing and extol him for the ages; bless 
Kurios, angels of Kurios, sing and extol him for the ages ; 
bless Kurios, waters, and all things above the heavens, 
sing and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, every 
power of Kurios, sing and extol him for the ages ; bless 
Kurios, sun and moon, sing and extol him for the ages; 
bless Kurios, stars of heaven, sing and extol him for the 
ages ; bless Kurios, all rain and dew, sing and extol him 
for the ages ; bless Kurios, all the winds, sing and extol 
him for the ages ; bless Kurios, fire and heat, sing and 
extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, nights and days, sing 
and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, light and dark- 
ness, sing and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, cold 
and heat, sing and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, 
frosts and snows, sing and extol liim for the ages; bless 
3* 



30 MIXED SERIES. 

Kurios, lightnings and clouds, sing and extol him for the 
ages ; let the earth bless Kurios, sing and extol him for 
the ages ; bless Kurios, mountains and hills, sing and extol 
him for the ages ; bless Kurios, all things produced in the 
•earth, sing and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, sea 
and rivers, sing and extol him for the ages; bless Kurios, 
fountains, sing and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, 
sea-monsters, and things that move in the waters, sing 
and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, all the birds of 
heaven, sing and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, all 
wild beasts and cattle, sing and extol him for the ages; 
bless Kurios, sons of men, sing and extol him for the ages; 
bless Kurios, Israel, sing and extol him for the ages; bless 
Kurios, priests, sing and extol him for the ages; bless 
Kurios, slaves, sing and extol him for the ages; bless 
Kurios, spirits and souls of just [men], sing and extol 
him for the ages ; bless Kurios, holy and humble in heart, 
sing and extol him for the ages ; bless Kurios, Ananiah, 
Azariah, [and] Mishael, sing and extol him for the ages; 
for he has delivered us from hades, and saved us from the 
hand of death, and plucked us from the midst of a furnace 
of burning fire ; he has even plucked us from the midst of 
the fire. Give thanks to Kurios, for he is good, for his 
mercy is forever ; all who worship Kurios, bless the God 
of gods, and sing and confess [him], for his mercy is 
forever. And Nebuchadnezzar heard them singing. 2S-67. 

11 Then king Nebuchadnezzar was astonished, and rose 
up in agitation ; the king answered and said to his coun- 
sellors, Did we not cast three men into the midst of the 
furnace, bound ? They answered and said to the king, 
Certainly, king. He answered and said, Behold, I saw 
four men, loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and there 
is no hurt on them, and the appearance of the fourth was 
like a son of God. 24-25. 

12 Then Nebuchadnezzar approached the door of the 



STORY I. 31 

burning fiery furnace ; he answered and said, Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abednego, servants of God the High one, 
come out and come forth. Then came out Shadrach, Me- 
shach, and Abednego, from the furnace of fire, and the 
satraps, prefects, and governors and counsellors of the 
king saw these men, on whose bodies the fire had no 
power, and the hair of their head was not singed, nor 
their pantaloons changed, nor had the smell of fire passed 
on them. 20, 27. 

12 Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, Blessed be the 
God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent 
his angel and delivered his servants that trusted in him, 
and changed the word of the king, and gave up their bodies, 
that they might not serve nor worship any god but their 
God. And I appoint a decree, that every people, and 
nation, and tongue that speak amiss against the God of 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut to pieces, 
and their houses made a dunghill ; because there is no 
other god who can save like this. Then the king pro- 
moted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province 
of Babylon. 28-30. 

PART III. 

CHALDEE SERIES. 

STORY I. [VII.] 4. 

Nebuchadnezzar's edict concerning his madness; its 
causes, accompaniments, and cure. 

1 Kixg Nebuchadnezzar to all peoples, nations, and 
tongues who dwell in all the earth, may your peace be 
multiplied. It has seemed good to me to show the signs 
and wonders which God the High one has performed with 
me. How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders ! 



32 CHALDEE SERIES. 

His kingdom is an eternal hingdom, and his dominion is to 
all generations. I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in my 
house, and flourishing in my palace. I saw a dream, and 
it made me afraid, and thoughts on my bed and visions 
of my head troubled me ; and I made a decree to bring 
up before me all the wise men of Babylon, that they 
might make known to me the interpretation of the 
dream. 4: 1-3. 

2 Then came the scribes, enchanters, Chasdim, and 
diviners, and I told them my dream, and they could not 
make known to me the interpretation. And at last Daniel 
came before me, whose name is Belteshazzar, according to 
the name of my God, because a spirit of holy Gods is in 
him, and I told my dream before him. Belteshazzar 
[said I], chief of scribes, because I know that a spirit of 
holy Gods is in you, and no secret troubles you, tell 
the visions of my dream which I have seen, and its inter- 
pretation. And the visions of my head on my bed [were 
these] : I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the 
earth, and its height was great. And the tree was large 
and strong, and its height reached to heaven, and its 
sight to the end of all the earth; its leaves were fair, and 
its fruit abundant, and food was on it for all ; under it 
were shaded the beasts of the earth, and on its branches 
dwelt the birds of heaven ; and all flesh was fed from it. 
I saw in the visions of my head on my bed, and behold, 
a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven. He 
cried aloud, and said thus : Cut down the tree, and trim 
off its branches, and strip off its leaves, and shake off its 
fruit; let the beasts flee from under it, and the birds from 
its branches; but leave a stump of its roots in the earth, 
in a band of iron and brass, in the grass of the field, and 
let it be wet w^ith the dew of heaven, and its portion be 
with beasts of the grass ; let its mind be changed from 
man, and the mind of a beast be given it ; and let seven 






STORY 1. 33 

times pass over it. The ordinance is by the decree of the 
watchers, and the order is the demand of holy ones, that 
the living may know that the High one rules in the king- 
dom of men, and gives it to whom he pleases, and exalts 
over it the basest of men. This is the dream which I 
king Nebuchadnezzar saw ; and do you, Belteshazzar, tell 
the interpretation, for none of the wise men of my king- 
dom can make known to me the interpretation ; but you 
can, for a spirit of holy Gods is in you. 4-15. 

3 Then Daniel, whose name is Belteshazzar, was aston- 
ished about an hour, and his thoughts troubled him. The 
king answered and said, Belteshazzar, let not the dream 
and its interpretation trouble you. Belteshazzar answered 
and said, My lord, let the dream be to those that hate 
you, and its interpretation to your enemies. The tree 
which you saw, which was large and strong, and its height 
reached to heaven, and its sight to all the earth, and its 
leaves were abundant, and its fruit much, and food was 
on it for all; under it dwelt the beasts of the field, and 
on its branches rested the birds of heaven ; that, king, is 
you, who have become great and mighty; and your great- 
ness is increased, and has reached to heaven, and your 
dominion is to the end of the earth. And as the king 
saw a watcher, a holy one, descend from heaven, and he 
said, Cut down the tree and overthrow it, but leave a 
stump of its roots in the earth, in a band of iron and brass, 
in the grass of the field, and let it be wet with the dew 
of heaven, and let its portion be with the beasts of the 
field, till seven times pass over it ; this is the interpretation, 
king, and the decree of the High one which has come on 
my lord the king. They shall drive you from men, and 
your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and 
they shall make you eat grass like oxen, and wet you with 
the dew of heaven, and sfcven times shall pass over you, 
till you know that the High one rules in the kingdom of 



34 CHALDEE SERIES. 

men, and gives it to whom he pleases. And as he com- 
manded that a stump should be left with the roots of the 
tree, your kingdom shall be sure when you know that 
Heaven rules. Wherefore, king, let my counsel be 
acceptable before you, and break off your sins by 
righteousness, and your wickednesses by showing kindness 
to the poor; possibly there may be a lengthening of your 
tranquillity. 10-24. 

4 All [this] came on Nebuchadnezzar the king. At 
the end of twelve months, he was walking before the 
palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king answered 
and said, Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for 
the house of my kingdom by the power of my riches, for 
the glory of my majesty? While the word was in the 
king's mouth, a voice came down from heaven, To you, 
king Nebuchadnezzar, is it spoken : the kingdom has de- 
parted from you, and they have driven you from men, 
and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field ; 
they shall feed you with grass like oxen, and seven times 
shall pass over you, till you know that the High one rules 
in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he pleases. 
In that hour the word was performed on Nebuchadnezzar, 
and he was driven from men, and made to eat grass like 
oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his 
hair grew like eagles, and his nails like birds. And at 
the end of the days, I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up my eyes 
to heaven, and my knowledge returned to me, and I 
blessed the High one, and praised and honored Him who 
lives forever, for his dominion is an eternal dominion, and 
his kingdom to all generations ; and all that inhabit the 
earth are considered nothing, and he does according to 
his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants 
of the earth, and there is none that can smite with his 
hand, nor can it be said to him, What have you done? 
At that time my knowledge returned to me, and with the 



STORY II. 85 

glory of my kingdom my honor and brightness returned 
upon me, and my counsellors and great men sought me, 
and I was established over my kingdom, and superior 
majesty was added to me. Xow I Nebuchadnezzar praise, 
and extol, and glorify the King of heaven, because all his 
works are true, and his ways just, and those that walk in 
pride he is able to abase. 

STORY II. [VIII.] 5. 

B el shazzars feast, siii, warning^ and punishment. 

1 King Belshazzar made a great feast to a thousand of 
his lords, and drank wine before a thousand. Belshazzar 
commanded, when he had tasted of the wine, that they 
should brino- the vases of o-old and silver which Xebu- 
chadnezzar his father had taken from the palace at Jeru- 
salem, that the king and his lords, his wives and his con- 
cubines, might drink in them. Then they brought the 
vases of gold which they had taken from the palace of 
the house of God at Jerusalem, and the king and his 
lords, his wives and his concubines, drank in them \ 
they drank wine, and j^raised the gods of gold, and silver, 
brass, iron, wood, and stone. 5: i-±. 

2 In that hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and 
wrote opposite to the candlestick on the plastering of the 
king's palace wall, and the king saw the palm of the hand 
which wrote. Then the king's countenance was changed, 
and his thoughts troubled him, and the joints of his loins 
were loosed, and his knees smote too-ether. The king: 
cried with a loud voice, that they should bring up the 
enchanters, Chasdim, and diviners. The king answered 
and said to the wise men of Babylon, Any man who will 
read this writing, and show its interpretation, shall be 
clothed in purple, and have a gold chain about his neck, 
and rule third in the kingdom. Then came in all the 



36 



CHALDEE SERIES. 



king's wise men, and could not read the writing, nor 
make known to the king the interpretation. 5-8. 

3 Then king Belshazzar was greatly troubled, and his 
countenance was changed upon him, and his lords were 
perplexed. The queen came to the banquet house on 
account of the words of the king and his lords ; the queen 
answered and said, King, live for ages; let not your 
thoughts trouble you, nor your countenance be changed. 
There is a man in your kingdom in whom is a spirit of 
holy Gods. In the days of your father, light, and intelli- 
gence, and wisdom, like the wisdom of Gods, were found 
in him ; and king Xebuehadnezzer your father made him 
chief over the scribes, enchanters, Chasdim, [and] diviners, 
— your father the king, — because an excellent spirit, and 
knowledge and intelligence to interpret dreams and solve 
riddles, were found in him, — in Daniel, — to whom the 
king gave the name of Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be 
called, and he will show the interpretation. 9-12. 

4 Then Daniel was brought up before the king. The 
king answered and said to Daniel, Are you that Daniel 
who is of the sons of the captives of Judah, whom the 
king my father brought from Judah? I have heard of 
you, that a spirit of Gods is in you, and light, and intelli- 
gence, and superior wisdom are found in you. And now 
the wise men, the enchanters, have been brought up be- 
fore me to read this writing and make known to me its 
interpretation, and they could not show the interpretation 
of the thing. And I have heard of you, that you can 
make interpretations and solve problems. Xow, if you 
can read this writing, and make known to me its inter- 
pretation, you shall be clothed in scarlet, and a gold chain 
be about yo^r neck, and you shall rule third in the king- 
dom. 5-16. 

5 Then Daniel answered and said before the king, 
Keep your gifts to yourself, and give your presents to 



STOKY II. 37 

others; but I will read the writing to the king, and make 
known its interpretation. As for you, king, God the 
High one gave a kingdom, and majesty, and glory to 
Xebuchadnezzar your father; and from the majesty which 
he gave him. all peoples, nations, and tongues feared and 
trembled before him. Whom he would he killed, and 
whom he would he preserved alive, and whom he would 
he exalted, and whom he would he cast down. And 
when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit strengthened 
[with pride], he was cast down from the royal throne, 
and honor taken away from him ; and he was driven from 
the sons of men, and his mind made like the beasts, and 
his dwelling was with wild asses. They fed him with 
grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the clew of 
heaven, till he knew that the high God rules in the king- 
dom of men, and sets over it whom he pleases. And you, 
his son Belshazzar, did not humble your heart, though 
you knew all this, but exalted yourself against the Master 
of heaven ; and they have brought the vases of his house 
before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your 
concubines, have drank wine in them, and praised gods of 
silver and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which 
neither see, nor hear, nor know, and the God in whose 
hand your breath is, and whose are all your ways, you 
have not glorified. Then was sent from before him the 
palm of a hand, and it wrote this writing, and this is the 
writing which was written : Mena, Mena, Tekel, Upharsiu. 
This is the interpretation of the thing: Mena, God has 
numbered [your kingdom, and finished it]. Tekel, you 
are weighed [in scales, and found wanting]. Peres, 
[your kingdom] is divided [and given to Media and 
Persia], ir-25. 

8 Then Belshazzar commanded, and they clothed 
Daniel in purple, and a chain of gold was put on his neck. 
and thev proclaimed concerning him, that he should be 
4 



38 CHALDEE SERIES. 

third ruler in the kingdom. On that night was Belshazzar 
king of the Chasclim killed, and Darius the Median took 
the kingdom, at about sixty-two years of age. 29— g •• 1. 

STORY III. [IX.] 6. 

Conspiracy against Daniel, his deliverance from the 
lions, and the destruction of the conspirators. 

1 It seemed good to Darius to set over the kingdom 
120 satraps, that they should be over all the kingdom ; 
and he set over them three presidents, of whom Daniel 
was first, that these satraps might give account to 
them, and the king not suffer loss. Then this Daniel 
was set over the presidents and satraps, because an excel- 
lent spirit was in him, and the king thought of setting 
him over all the kingdom, r>: 2-4. 

2 Then the presidents and satraps sought to find a pre- 
text against Daniel, in respect to the kingdom; and they 
could find no pretext, nor fault, because he was faithful, 
and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men 
said, We shall not find a pretext against this Daniel unless 
we find it against him by the law of his God. Then these 
presidents and satraps assembled themselves before the 
king, and said thus to him ; King Darius, live for ages. 
All the presidents of the kingdom, prefects and satraps, 
counsellors and governors, have consulted together to 
establish a royal decree, and make a strong prohibition, 
that any man who shall ask any thing at all of any god or 
man for thirty days, except of you, king, shall be cast into 
the lions' den. Now, king, establish the prohibition, and 
write the writing, that it may not be changed, according 
to the law of Media and Persia, which changes not. 
Wherefore king Darius wrote the writing and de- 
cree. 5-10. 

3 And when he knew that the writing was written, 



STORY HI. 39 

Daniel went to his house, and, his windows being open in 
his chamber towards Jerusalem, three times a day kneeled 
on his knees, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, 
in all respects as he had done before that. Then these men 
assembled and found Daniel praying and making suppli- 
cation before his God. Then they came near, and spoke 
before the king concerning the king's decree : Did you 
not write a decree, that any man who should ask anything 
of any God or man for thirty days, except of you, king, 
should be cast into the lions' den ? The king answered 
and said, The thing is true, according to the law of Media 
and Persia, which passes not away. Then they answered 
and said before the king, That Daniel, who is of the sons 
of the captives of Judah, regards not your decree, nor the 
prohibition which you have written, but offers his prayers 
three times a day. Then, when the king heard this thing, 
he was exceedingly displeased with himself, and set [his] 
heart on Daniel to save him, and he strove till the rising 
of the sun to save him. Then these men assembled them- 
selves together to the king, and said to the king, Know, 
king, that it is a law of Media and Persia, that no prohi- 
bition or ordinance which the king establishes can be 
changed. Then the king commanded that they should 
bring: Daniel and cast him into the lions' den. The kino- 
answered and said to Daniel, Your God, whom you serve 
continually, shall save you. And a stone was brought 
and put on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it 
with his signet ring, and the signet ring of his lords, 
that the purpose concerning Daniel might not be 
changed, n-is. 

4 Then went the king to his palace, and passed the 
night fasting ; and his concubines came not before him, 
and his sleep was driven from him. Then the king rose 
up at the dawn, with the light, and went with haste to 
the lions' den. And when he approached the den, he 



40 CHALDEE SERIES. 

cried to Daniel with a bitter cry. The king answered and 
said to Daniel, Daniel, servant of the living God, has your 
God, whom you serve continually, been able to save you 
from the lions ? Then Daniel said t& the king, King, live 
for ages ; God has sent his angel and shut the mouth of 
the lions, and they have not hurt me, because before him 
innocence was found in me, and also before you, king, I 
have done no harm. 19-2.3. 

5 Then the king was greatly pleased on account of 
him, and commanded that they should take up Daniel 
out of the den ; and Daniel was taken out of the den, and 
no hurt was found in him, because he trusted in his God. 
And the king commanded, and they brought those men 
who accused Daniel, and cast them into the lions' den, 
they and their sons, and their wives; and they did not 
touch the bottom of the den, before the lions had the 
mastery of them, and broke all their bones. 24, 25. 

6 Then king Darius wrote to all peoples, nations, and 
tongues that dwell in all the earth, May your peace be 
multiplied ; I make a decree from before me, that in 
every dominion in my kingdom they shall fear and trem- 
ble before the God of Daniel; for he is the living God, 
and stands up forever, and his kingdom shall not be 
destroyed, and his dominion is to the end. He saves, and 
delivers, and performs signs and wonders in heaven and 
earth ; he saved Daniel from the hand of the lions. And 
this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the 
reign of Cyrus the Persian. 20-29. 

STORY IV. [X.] 7. 

DanieVs dream of four earthly kingdoms and a fined 
heavenly one, and its interpretation by an angel. 

1 In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, 
Daniel dreamed a dream, and [had] visions of his head 



STOET IV. 41 

on his bed. Then he wrote the dream, [and] told the 
chief of the things. Daniel answered and said, I saw 
visions by night, and behold, four winds of heaven burst 
forth on the great sea, and four great animals [beasts] 
came up from the sea, one different from another. The 
first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings ; and I saw till 
its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the 
earth, and set on two feet, like a man, and a man's mind 
was given it. 7: 1-4. 

2 And behold, another second beast was like a bear, 
and it was set up on one side, and three ribs were in its 
mouth between its teeth; and they said thus to it: Arise, 
devour much flesh. 5. 

3 After this I saw, and behold, another, like a leopard, 
and it had four wings of a bird on its back, and the beast 
had four heads, and dominion was given it. 6. 

4 After this I saw, in visions of the night, and behold, 
a fourth beast, terrible and strong, and of great power, 
and it had great iron teeth, and it devoured, and beat fine, 
and trampled down the remnant with its feet. And it 
was unlike all the beasts before it, and had ten horns. I 
observed the horns, and behold, there came up another 
little horn among them, and three of the former horns 
were plucked up before it ; and behold, this horn had eyes 
like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. 
I saw, till thrones were set up, and one of ancient days 
[David] sat; and his clothing was white as snow, and the 
hair of his head like pure wool, his throne a flame of fire, 
and his wheels a burning fire. A stream of fire flowed 
and came forth before him, a thousand thousand minis- 
tered to him, and ten thousand ten thousand stood before 
him; and the judgment sat, and the Scriptures were 
opened. I saw then from the voice of the mighty words 
which the horn spoke ; I saw till the beast was killed, 
and his body destroyed and given to a burning fire. But 

4* 



42 CHALDEE SEEIES. 

as for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken 
away, and a prolongation of life was given them for a 
time and season. 7-12. 

5 I saw, in visions of the night, and behold, in the 
clouds of heaven came [one] like a son of mortal. And 
he came to the one of ancient days, and they brought him 
near before him. And there was given him dominion 
and majesty, and a kingdom ; and nations, and peoples, 
and tongues serve him, and his dominion shall be an eter- 
nal dominion, which shall not pass away, nor his kingdom 
be destroyed. 13, 14. 

6 My spirit was grieved — I am Daniel — in the midst 
of its sheath, and the visions of my head troubled me. I 
came near to one of those that rose up [angels], and in- 
quired of him the meaning of all this. And he told me, 
and made me understand the interpretation of the thing. 
These great beasts, which are four, [he says,] are four 
kings [kingdoms], which shall rise up from the earth ; 
then the holy ones of Olions shall take the kingdom, and 
possess the kingdom for the age, and for the age of 
ages. 15-18. 

7 Then I desired that he would explain concerning the 
fourth beast, which was different from the others, very 
terrible ; its teeth iron, its claws brass ; it devoured, beat 
fine, and trampled down the remnant with its feet ; and 
concerning the ten horns which were on its head, and the 
other which come up, and three fell before it, even that 
horn which had eyes, and a mouth speaking great things, 
and its appearance was greater than its fellows. I saw, 
and that horn made war with the holy ones, and prevailed 
against them, till one of ancient days came, and the judg- 
ment sat for the holy ones of Olions, and the time came, 
and the holy ones possessed the kingdom. He said thus : 
The fourth beast is the fourth kingdom that shall be on 
the earth [Rome] ; it shall be different from all kingdoms, 






STORY I. 43 

and shall devour all the earth, and trample it down, and 
beat it fine. And the ten horns of that kingdom are ten 
kings [rulers ; 2 consuls and 8 tribunes of the people], 
which shall arise, and another shall arise after them [em- 
perors], and he shall be unlike the former, and shall cause 
three kings [the triumvirate] to fall; and he shall speak 
words against the High one, and shall wear out the holy 
ones of Olions, and think to change times and laws, and 
they shall be given into his hand for a time and times 
and a half [3^- years]. And judgment shall sit, and they 
shall take away his dominion to destroy [it] and bring it 
to an end; and the kingdom and dominion, and greatness 
of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to 
a people of the holy ones of Olions, whose kingdom is an 
eternal kingdom, and all dominions shall worship and 
obey him. Thus far is the end of the word. As for me, — 
I am Daniel, — my thoughts greatly troubled me, and my 
countenance was changed upon me; but I kept the word 
in my heart. io-2s. 

PART IV. 

GREEK SERIES. 

STORY I. [XL] 

Susanna, or Daniel delivering an innocent woman from 
false accusers. 

1 There was a man living at Babylon, and his name 
was Joakim, and he took a wife whose name was Susanna, 
daughter of Chelcias, exceedingly beautiful, and fearing 
the Lord [Kurios] ; and her parents were just, and taught 
their daughter according to the law of Moses. And Joa- 
kim was very rich, and had a park near his house, and 
the Jews resorted to him, because he was more honorable 
than all. i-4. 



44 GREEK SERIES. 

2 And two of the elders of the people were designated 
that year judges, of whom the Master said that unright- 
eousness from Babylon went out from elders [who were] 
judges, who seemed to guide the people. And these were 
much at Joakim's house, and all that had causes came to 
them. 5, 6. 

3 And when the people went away at midday, Susanna 
went out and walked in her husband's park. And the 
two elders saw her daily going in and walking about, and 
were in a passion for her. And they perverted their 
minds, and turned away their eyes that they might not 
look to heaven, nor remember just judgments; and they 
were both anxious concerning her, and neither told the 
other his desire, for they were ashamed to declare their 
desire, for they wished to be with her. And they watched 
diligently every clay to see her; and one said to the other, 
Let us go home now, for it is time for dinner. And hav- 
ing gone out, they separated from each other, and turning 
back, came to the same place ; and examining closely 
each other for the cause, they confessed their desire, and 
then appointed a time in common when they would be 
able to find her alone. 7-14. 

4 And it came to pass, when they watched for a con- 
venient day, she went out as yesterday and the day be- 
fore, with two girls only, and desired to wash herself in 
the park, for it was warm. And there was no one there, 
except the two elders, hid and watching her. And she 
said to the girls, Bring me the oil and soaps, and shut the 
gates of the park, that I may wash myself. And they 
did as she said, and shut the gates of the park, and went 
out at the side gates, to bring the things ordered for her, 
and knew not of the elders, for they were hid. 15-18. 

5 And it came to pass, when the girls went out, then 
the two old men rose up and ran to her, and said, Behold, 
the gates of the park are shut, and no one sees us, and we 



STORY I. 45 

are in a passion for you ; wherefore consent to us, and be 
with us ; but if not, we will testify against you, that a 
young man was with you, and for that reason you sent 
the girls away from you. And Susanna sighed and said, 
I am straitened on every side ; for both if I do this, it is 
death to me, and if I do [it] not, I shall not escape from 
your hands. It is preferable for me, not having done it, 
to fall into your hands, rather than to sin before Kurios. 
And Susanna cried with a loud voice, and the two old 
men also cried against her; and one, having ran, opened 
the gates of the park. And when those from the house heard 
the cry in the park, they ran in by the side gate to see 
what had happened. And when the old men told their 
words, the servants were greatly ashamed, for such a word 
was never said of Susanna. And it came to pass on the 
morrow, when the people came together to her husband 
Joakim, the two old men came, full of an unrighteous 
purpose against Susanna, to kill her, and said before the 
people, Send for Susanna, daughter of Chelcias ; she is 
the wife of Joakim. 19-29. 

6 And they sent, and she came, and her parents, and 
her children, and all her relations ; and Susanna was a 
very delicate woman, and beautiful in appearance. And 
the transgressors commanded her to be uncovered, for she 
was covered with a veil, that they might be filled with 
her beauty. And all that were with her, and all that saw 
her, wept. And the two old men stood up in the midst 
of the people, and laid their hands on her head, and she, 
weeping, looked to heaven, for her heart trusted in 

KurioS. 29-35. 

7 And the old men said, As we were walking about in 
the park, this [woman] entered in with two girls ; and 
she shut the gates of the park, and dismissed the girls ; 
and a young man who was hid came to her, and fell back 
with her. But we, being in a corner of the garden, seeing 



46 GREEK SERIES. 

the unrighteousness, ran upon them, and seeing them to- 
gether, were not able to hold him, because he was stronger 
than we ; and opening the gates, he ran away ; but seizing 
her, we demanded who the young man was, and she would 
not tell us. These things we testify. And the synagogue 
believed them, as being elders of the people and judges, 
and condemned her to die. 36-41. 

8 But Susanna cried w T ith a loud voice, and said, 
Eternal God, knower of secrets, who knowest all things 
before they occur, thou knowest that they have testified 
falsely against me ; and behold, I die, having done noth- 
ing of what they have injuriously accused me. And Ku- 
rios heard her voice, and when she was being led away to 
be killed, God excited the holy spirit of a young boy by 
the name of Daniel, and he cried with a loud voice, I am 
innocent of this blood. And all the people turned to him 
and said, What is this word which you have said? And 
he stood up in the midst of them and said, So foolish are 
the sons of Israel, not examining nor knowing certainly, 
you have condemned a daughter of Israel. Return to 
the place of judgment, for these men have testified falsely 
against her. And all the people returned with haste, 
and the elders said to him, Come, sit in the midst of us, 
and declare to us, for God has given you the elder- 
ship. 42-50. 

9 And Daniel said to them, Separate them at a distance 
from each other, and I will examine them. And when 
they were separated one from the other, he called one of 
them, and said to him, You that have grown old in evil 
days, now have your sins which you formerly committed 
become sharp, judging unjust judgments, and condemn- 
ing the innocent, but acquitting the guilty, when God 
said, You shall not kill the innocent and just. ~Now there- 
fore, if you saw this woman, tell under what tree you saw 
them having intercourse with each other. And he said, 



stoet n. 47 

Under a mastic tree. And Daniel said, Well, you have 
lied against your own head ; for already an angel of God 
has received [an order] from God to [masticize] cut you 
in two : and he put him aside. 51-06. 

10 And he ordered that they should bring forward the 
other; and he said to him, Race of Canaan, and not of 
Judah, beauty has deceived you, and passion perverted 
your mind ; you did thus to the daughters of Israel, and 
they through fear had intercourse witli you ; but a daugh- 
ter of Judah endured not your unrighteousness. Xow tell 
me under what tree you caught them having intercourse 
with each other. And he said, Under a scarlet oak. And 
Daniel said to him, Well, you also have lied against your 
head ; for the angel of God, having a sword, waits to [oak- 
ize] cut you in two, that he may destroy you. And all the 
congregation cried with a loud voice, and blessed God who 
saves those that hope in him. And they rose up against 
the two old men, for Daniel had convicted them as false 
accusers from their own mouth, and did to them as they 
injuriously purposed to do to a neighbor; they did accord- 
ing to the law of Moses, and killed them, and innocent 
blood was saved on that day. And Chelcias and his wife 
praised God, on account of their daughter, with Joakim 
her husband, and her relations, because nothing dishonora- 
ble was found in her; and Daniel was great before the 
people from that day and thenceforward. 

STORY II. [XII.] 

Bel and the Dragon, or Daniel destroying JBeibylonieui 
■idols, and sared from the lions'* den. 

1 Axd king Astyages was put with his fathers, and 
Cyrus the Persian took the kingdom, and Daniel was a 
table companion of the king, and honored above all his 
friends. And there was an idol at Babylon by the name 



48 GREEK SERIES. 

of Bel, and there were expended upon him each day 12 
artabae of fine flour, and 40 sheep, and 6 metretes of wine. 
And the king worshipped him, and went daily to worship 
him, but Daniel worshipped his God. And the king said 
to him, Why do you not worship Bel? And he said, 
Because I do not worship idols made with hands, but the 
living God, who created heaven and earth, and has do- 
minion of all flesh. And the king said to him, Do you 
not think Bel is a living god? Do you not see how 
much he eats and drinks daily? And Daniel, laughing, 
said, Be not deceived, king ; for this [object] is clay within 
and brass without, and never consumed a thing. 1-7. 

2 And the king, being angry, called his priests and said 
to them, If you tell me not who it is that consumes this 
expense, you shall die ; but if you show that Bel con- 
sumes it, Daniel shall die; because he has blasphemed 
against Bel. And Daniel said to the king, Be it accord- 
ing to your word. And the priests of Bel were seventy, 
besides women and children. 8-io. 

3 And the priests of Bel said, Behold, we will go out, 
and do you, king, set the food and mix the wine, and close 
the door, and seal it with your finger ring ; and come in 
the morning, and if you do not find all eaten by Bel, we 
will die, or [otherwise] Daniel, who has lied against us. 
And they despised [it], because the}' had made under the 
table a concealed entrance, and by it went in continually, 
and consumed the things, n-13. 

4 And it came to pass, when they went out, the king 
set the food for Bel, and Daniel commanded his servants, 
and they brought ashes and sifted them over the whole 
temple in the presence of the king alone. And they went 
out, and closed the door, and sealed [it] with the king's 
finger ring, and went away. And the priests came by 
night, according to their custom, and their wives and 
children, and ate and drank all. And the king rose early 



STORY II. 49 

in the morning, and Daniel with him; and he said, Daniel, 
are the seals safe ? And Daniel said, Safe, king. And. it 
came to pass, as soon as they opened the doors, looking 
on the table, the king cried with a loud voice, Great are 
you, Bel, and there is no deceit with you at all. And 
Daniel laughed, and held the king, that he might not go 
in, and said, See now the floor, and note whose tracks are 
these. And the king said, I see the tracks of men, women, 
and children. And the king, being angry, apprehended the 
priests, and their wives and children; and they showed 
him the concealed doors by which they went in and con- 
sumed the [things] on the table. And the king killed 
them, and gave Bel as a present to Daniel, and he 
destroyed him and his temple. 14-22. 

5. And there was a great dragon, and the Babylonians 
worshipped him ; and the king said to Daniel, Will you 
say also that this is brass ? Behold, he lives, and eats, 
and drinks. You cannot say that this is not a living god; 
therefore worship him. And Daniel said, I will worship 
Kurios, my God, for he is the living God ; but, king, give 
me permission, and I will kill the dragon, without 
sword or staff. And the king said, I give you [permis- 
sion]. 23-:6. 

6. And Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and boiled 
[them] together, and made cakes and put in the mouth 
of the dragon, and the dragon ate, and was torn open. 
And he said, See your objects of worship. 27. 

7. And it came to pass, when the Babylonians heard [of 
this] they were very angry, and turned against the king, 
and said, The king has become a Jew ; he has torn Bel 
to pieces, killed the dragon, and slaughtered the priests. 
And they came to the king, and said, Give us Daniel; if 
not, we will kill you and your house. And the king saw 
that they pressed him exceedingly, and the king gave 
them Daniel, and they cast him into the pit of lions, and 

5 



50 GREEK SERIES. 

he was there six days. And there were seven lions in the 
pit, and there were given them daily two slaves [bodies] 
and two sheep ; and then they were not given them, that 
they might devour Daniel. And Ambakoum [Habakkuk] 
the prophet was in Judea, and he boiled meat, and broke 
bread in the vase, and went to the plain to carry it to the 
harvesters. And the angel of Kurios said to Habakkuk, 
Carry away the dinner which you have, to Babylon, to 
Daniel in the pit of lions. And Habakkuk said, Kurios, I 
never saw Babylon, and do not know of the pit of lions. 
And the angel of Kurios took hold of the crown of [his] 
head, and bearing [him] by the hair of his head, placed 
him in Babylon above the pit, with the force of his spirit. 
And Habakkuk cried, saying, Daniel, Daniel, take the 
dinner which God has sent you. And Daniel said, My 
God, thou hast remembered and not forsaken them that 
love thee. And Daniel rose up and ate. And the angel 
of God restored Habakkuk instantly to his place. And 
the king came on the seventh day to mourn for Daniel. 
And he came to the pit, and looked in ; and behold, Daniel 
was sitting [there] ; and crying with a loud voice, he 
said, Great art thou, Kurios, God of Daniel, and there 
is no other besides thee. And he drew him out, and cast 
the causes of his destruction into the pit, and they were 
devoured instantly in his presence. 28-42. 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

Contents and subject matter of the book, its languages and natural 

divisions. 

1. The book of Daniel, as it appears in the Hebrew 
Bible, is bilingual, of two languages, Hebrew and Chaldee. 
In its completed form, as it appears in the Septuagint, 
and was generally accepted by the Hellenic Jews of the 
time of Christ, it has additions in Greek, which, being 
joined to the Hebrew and Chaldee, make it trilingual, a 
book in three languages. The Hebrew part consists of 
four independent stories, the mixed of two, the Chaldee 
of four, and the Greek of two. Of these, the first ten, 
without the Greek addition to Story VI., constitute the 
canonical book of the Hebrew Bible ; and the other por- 
tions are un canonical additions in Greek, but essential 
parts of the Septuagint book. 

2. It is the natural mode of treating books in different 
languages, to resolve them into integral parts, according 
to their structures and subjects, as we do other books; 
and then further to distinguish, as far as may be, those 
integral parts in different languages, according to their 
languages and dates. This is the natural and scientific 
method of treating all books, sacred and common ; and 
obvious as it is, has yet to be applied to Daniel. It needs 
but to be proposed, in order that its propriety and neces- 

(51) 



52 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

sity may be clearly seen. Its neglect hitherto is a sur- 
prising oversight. 

3. The Hebrew stories ought to be discriminated and 
studied as Hebrew, the Chaldee as Chaldee, and the 
Greek as Greek; and the whole ought to be combined 
and studied as a single work. The Hebrew stories are 
complete without either the mixed or Chaldee, and the 
Hebrew and Chaldee without the Greek ; but when all 
are combined, we have the completed book of Daniel as 
it appears in the Septuagint, and was received and used 
both by Jews and Christians from the time of Christ, 
during the earliest Christian centuries. Ignatius men- 
tions Susanna in his epistle to the Magnesians, and the 
Roman Clement, in his second Epistle. The Greek books 
and parts of books were commented upon and freely dis- 
cussed in sermons, in connection with the other sacred 
books. The church of Rome, agreeably to a decision of 
the Council of Trent, allows them to be of equal authority 
with the Hebrew; and the English and Lutheran churches 
allow them to be used in public assemblies for religious 
instruction, without admitting their canonical authority, 
or elevating them to the same dignity as the canonical 
books. 

4. The first of the stories of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible 
is in Hebrew; then follows a Chaldee story, with a He- 
brew introduction, and live other stories in Chaldee ; after 
which the Hebrew is resumed, and three more stories in 
Hebrew complete the book. In the Septuagint the story 
of Susanna is prefixed to the first Hebrew story; the 
Chaldee story of the image of Dura, and the deliverance 
of the three pious children from the burning fiery furnace, 
is interpolated with the prayer of Azariah and song of 
the three ; and the whole is followed by stories of Bel 
and the dragon. When these additions were made is not 
known. Theodotion found them in the Septuagint of his 



CEITICAL IXTRODUCTIOX. 53 

time, 180-192 A. D., and passed them along. Theodotion 
was not a recensionist, revising bis text, but only a trans- 
lator, revising and improving tbe rendering. For aught 
that appears, these additions may have been the work of 
the original Septuagint translator. This is indicated by 
their agreement in style with his translations; they have 
his peculiar modes of expression. Some have thought, 
however, that the song of the three was by a different 
composer from the prayer. 

5. Julius Africanus, in the third century, objected to the 
historic character of Susanna, and Origen defended it, but 
not satisfactorily. It has all the essential marks of fiction, 
but Home, Davidson, and Tregelles think it is substan- 
tially true. [See Home's Introduction, revised and cor- 
rected by Davidson and Tregelles, vol. ii. page 938.] 
Can there be a more striking exhibition of the simplicity 
of Christian criticism ? Like the parables of the New 
Testament, it illustrates principles, and its historical truth 
is of no consequence. 

6. Theodotion's translation of Daniel sujDerseded the 
original one found in the Septuagint, on account of its 
superior accuracy. The original was long supposed to be 
lost, but it has since been recovered and published, and is 
among the most venerable relics of an age preceding that 
of Christ and the apostles. 

Theodotion was a Jewish proselyte of Ephesus, called 
by Jerome an Ebionite, or Judaizing Christian. Accord- 
ing to Jerome, his version was published under Commo- 
dus, 180-192. It is a revision of the original Septuagint, 
and not strictly a new translation, though generally called 
such. His translation of Daniel superseded the original 
one in the Septuagint, about 300 A. D. It was less literal 
than Aquihrs, who preceded him as a translator, and less 
free than that of Symmachus, who followed him. 

7. Home divides the Hebrew and Chaldee Daniel into 

5* 



54 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

two parts. First, Historic, containing the first six chap- 
ters; and second, Prophetic, containing the last six. This 
division is preserved in the revised work, with the joint 
authority of Davidson and Tregelles, but has no just 
foundation in the character of the book, and is not sus- 
tained by scientific analysis. The book consists of 10 
stories in Hebrew and Chaldee, and with the Greek addi- 
tions, of 12. These might be divided into Historic and 
Prophetic; in which case the Chaldee story concerning 
Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the four kingdoms would have 
to be classed with the Prophetic part, and perhaps the 
story of Belshazzar's feast: that also contains a prophecy. 
But a classification according to languages, and in some 
degree according to the dates and ages of the stories, is 
both more natural and more useful, and is therefore 
adopted in this work. This language and chronologic 
classification is as follows : — 

L Hebrew stories, 4 ; II. Mixed stories, 2 ; III. Chal- 
dee stories, 4 ; IV. Greek stories, 2. Total, 12. 

Part I. Hebrew Series. 

1. Captivity, early piety, scholarship, and promotion of 
Daniel and his three friends. 

2. Daniel's vision of the four kingdoms to the reign of 
Antiochus IV., 175-163 B. C, and its interpretation by 
Gabriel. 

3. Daniel's prayer, and oracle of the 70 weeks received 
orally from Gabriel. 

4. Daniel's fast of three weeks, and an Apocalyse of the 
latter days to the times of Antiochus IV., and the king- 
dom of Michael, received from an angel. 

Part II. Mixed Series. 
1. Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the four kingdoms, to the 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION". 55 

close of the Syrian and Egyptian Greek empires, near the 
time of Christ, and of the stone cut without hands. 

2. The image of Dura, and the three pious children 
saved from the burning fiery furnace. 

Part III. Chaldee Series. 

1. Nebuchadnezzar's edict, or encyclic letter concerning 
his madness, with its premonitions, accompaniments, and 
consequences. 

2. Belshazzar's feast, with his profanation of the sacred 
vases of the temple, his warning, and punishment. 

3. Law of Darius the Mede against prayer, Daniel's ob- 
servance of the higher law, and his deliverance from the 
lions' den. 

4. Daniel's dream of the four kingdoms, with Rome 
under the emperors for the fourth and last, and the final 
kingdom of God. 

Part IV. Greek Series. 

1. Susanna, or Daniel delivering an innocent woman 
who was falsely accused, and destroying her accusers. 

2. Bel and the dragon, or Daniel destroying Babylonian 
idols and imaginary deities, and saved a second time from 
the lions' den. 

CHAPTER II. 

Assumed dates of Daniel, its defects as a biography, titles of the 
book, slight grounds on which it is referred to Daniel and his 
times, and the account of its being shown to Alexander the Great. 

1. The first story commences 605 B. C, in the third 
year of Jehoiakim, and the latest assumed date in the book 
is that of Story IV., in the third year of Cyrus, at Babylon, 
535 B. C. These extreme dates include an interval of 70 



56 CRITICAL IXTRODUCTIOlSr. 

years, concerning which the book gives us but little in- 
formation. History supplies considerable, and it is a 
period that well deserves attention. 

2. How old Daniel was at the opening of Story I., or 
how long he lived after the apocalypse related in Story 
IV., we are not informed. He is not immature when he 
is first introduced to us, but is old enough to have settled 
principles of morality of the strictest and severest kind, 
and to be a candidate for the Babylonian college, the 
qualifications for which, required that he 'should already 
have been instructed in u all wisdom and understanding." 
These were not novices, or persons in early youth, but 
must have been of considerable age. We may suppose 
that Daniel was 20 years old at the time of his capture ; 
if he was, he was 90 at the time of receiving the apocalypse 
of Story IV.; he evinces no decline of his mental powers 
at this advanced age, nor is he represented as an aged 
man ; his age does not seem to have been thought of by 
the writer. 

3. Nothing is said of Daniel's parentage or domestic 
relations; he is as destitute of father, mother, brother, 
sister, or other relations, as Melchisedec, and as far as ap- 
pears, might have been a special creation, or have had a 
divine origin. No account is given of his birth or death; 
his book is not a biography, and does not describe his 
life, but states a few remarkable incidents and events, in 
most of which he bears a part. Daniel is the principal 
character in all the stories but one. Story VI., of the 
three pious children in the burning fiery furnace, relates 
exclusively to his three friends. 

4. The reasons for referring the book of Daniel to the 
times in which its scenes are laid, and for making Daniel 
its author, are about as weighty as might be adduced to 
show that Paradise Lost belongs to the age of Adam, and 
was written by Seth, and that the Iliad belongs to 1184 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 57 

B. C, the period of the fall of Troy, previous to the times 
of Samuel, and was written by Achilles or Agamemnon. 
It is quite as possible that Seth wrote Paradise Lost, and 
Agamemnon the Iliad, as that Daniel wrote the book which 
bears his name. 

5. Nothing is said in the book of its age or authorship ; 
and Daniel makes no claims to be its author. Its title is 
by the Jewish canonists, and is no part of the book; it is 
simply Daniel ; in Theodotion's version in the Septuagint, 
it is the same ; in the common English Bible it is, The 
Book of Daniel; which signifies either by Daniel or con- 
cerning him. The latter is all that it necessarily signifies, 
and therefore is all that can be certainly inferred from it. 

6. Thomas Hartwell Home, in his " Critical Introduc- 
tion to the Study of the Scriptures," calls it " The Book 
of the Prophet Daniel," and makes Daniel the fourth of 
the greater prophets. He says that, " although the name 
of Daniel is not prefixed to the book [by the writer], the 
many passages in which he speaks in the first person suffi- 
ciently prove that he was the author." 

7. This statement is a good example of the loose and 
inconclusive reasoning of the most eminent Christian 
scholars on the subject. On superficial inquiry it looks 
plausible, and at the first glance has the appearance of 
an argument ; it is a pillar of the common faith. The 
superficial character and credulity of Christian criticism 
are amazing, and this may serve as an example of much. 

Home is a learned and excellent man, and an indefati- 
gable laborer in the cause of sacred learning; his reading 
is extensive and his studies are immense ; but he begs his 
primary questions, and they vitiate numerous later con- 
clusions. His work was rejected by the Christian Ra- 
tionalists of Germany, at the time of its publication, as 
radically defective in its logic ; but the English, of nearly 
all denominations, received it with great favor as almost 



58 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

the Talmud of Christianity ; and such it is, in more senses 
than one. With most, it is still a high authority. The 
representation of Daniel, as speaking in the first person in 
several stories of the book, proves nothing in relation to 
its authorship. Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey contin- 
ually represents his characters as speaking in the first 
person ; Milton in Paradise Lost, and Shakspeare in his 
plays, do the same. Is Adam therefore the author of 
Paradise Lost, or Agamemnon of the Iliad ? Is Hamlet 
the author of the play of Hamlet, and Julius Caesar of the 
tragedy which relates to him ? The use of the first person 
is no evidence of authorship whatever, but often an evi- 
dence of fiction. It is often quite clear that none of the 
parties who are represented as speaking in the first person 
can, by any possibility, have participated in constructing 
the works to which their parts belong. 

8. It wants no argument to show the defectiveness of 
this logic ; the literature of all ages and nations is against 
it, and unless the other arguments depended upon to 
prove Daniel's authorship of the book shall, on examina- 
tion, prove sound, that assumption must be abandoned. 

9. Josephus tells us (A. J. 11. 8. 4, 5) that Jaddua, the 
chief priest, was divinely instructed in a dream to open 
Jerusalem to Alexander the Great, after he had taken 
Tyre and Gaza, and receive him into the city. He also 
tells us that Alexander, in consequence of a dream by 
which he had been divinely instructed before he left 
Europe on his perilous enterprise of the conquest of Persia, 
received the chief priest with great respect, went to the 
temple with him, offered sacrifices by his direction, and 
was shown the prophecy of Daniel, in which it was said 
that a Greek king should overthrow the kingdom of 
Persia. 

10. This prediction belongs to the Hebrew part of 
Daniel, and is the earliest of the four parts which consti- 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 59 

tute the book ; but its composition was not earlier than 
164 B. C, 168 years after the time of Alexander's sup- 
posed visit to Jerusalem. 

11. Josephus tells us further, that Alexander was so 
well pleased, that he allowed the Jews to enjoy their own 
laws, exempted them from tribute the seventh year, and 
promised to do for them all that they desired. It is not 
impossible that Alexander visited Jerusalem, though we 
have no contemporary account of it, and it is scarcely 
probable. He doubtless accepted the submission of the 
Jews, as he did of other nationalities in Western Asia and 
elsewhere. He probably received the Jews with liberality, 
and treated their religion with respect : this was his 
general method ; he raised up no unnecessary obstacles 
to the success of his arms, by making war on religions. 
His subjects worshipped what gods they pleased, and in 
what modes they pleased ; but this account of the show- 
ing of the book of Daniel wants proof. How did Josephus 
know it ? What authority has he for his assertion ? He 
gives us none, and appears to have none. 

Alexander's supposed visit to Jerusalem, after the con- 
quest of Gaza, was in 332 B. C, and Josephus published 
his works, after the taking of Jerusalem, in A. D. 70, more 
than 400 years after the events which he relates. The 
showing of the book of Daniel to Alexander by Jaddua 
is entirely unsupported by previous authorities, Greek or 
Hebrew, and cannot therefore be admitted. The asser- 
tion of Josephus proves nothing, except that the Hebrew 
stories of Daniel were extant in his time, and belonged to 
the canonical books of the Jews, which agrees with the 
showing of his earlier writings. Josephus, 400 years after 
the event, is quite too late to be a witness, and his account 
is not entitled to the least confidence. The mythic and 
fictitious character of the transaction is indicated by the 
two dreams, one had by Alexander before he left Europe, 
and the other by Jaddua, after the taking of Gaza. 



60 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Jaddua would have been stupid indeed, not to dream 
favorably to admitting Alexander into the city and mak- 
ing the best terms with him possible, after he had con- 
quered Northern Syria, Tyre, and Gaza, and was threat- 
ening Egypt and Persia, the two great dominant powers 
of the world at that time. The work of Josephus abounds 
with mythic and other fictitious elements, interpolating 
the older Judaic narratives ; and this appears to be one of 
them. It proves nothing, therefore, in favor of the author- 
ship of the book by Daniel, or its existence in the times 
of Alexander; nor is there any good reason why the truth 
on this subject, as on others, should not be gladly accepted 
and welcomed. 



CHAPTER III. 

Argument for the late authorship of Daniel, from its late position in 
the Hebrew canon, and unsuccessful attempts of critics to invali- 
date it. 

1. The position of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible is not 
the same as in the English; in the English it follows 
the major prophets and precedes the minor ; in the Hebrew 
it stands in no connection with the prophets, but is in 
the latter part of still later writings of the scribes. The 
Prophetic books consist of two series: I. The Earlier 
Prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings ; II. The 
Later Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, 
Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zeph- 
aniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. These complete 
the books of the prophets. The Hebrew Bible begins 
and ends with books not attributed to them. The books 
called the Prophets are so called as being supposed pro- 
ductions of the prophets. The Earlier Prophets do not 
relate to prophets chiefly, nor report their discourses, but 
narrate the principal events of Hebrew history and tradi- 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 61 

tion, from the death of Moses, 1451 B. C, to that of Je- 
hoiachin, about 550 B. C, during a period of 901 years. 
No reason can be assigned for their having been called 
Earlier Prophets, but the opinion that they were written 
by the earlier prophets. 

2. The Pentateuch was supposed to be written by Moses, 
and therefore was not ascribed to the earlier prophets, 
though probably written by them. No professional proph- 
ets appear before the time of Balaam, and he was a prophet 
of Miclian, but at the same time a prophet of Jeva. The 
next prophet that appears in sacred history is Samuel, 
who seems to have founded schools of the prophets. 
Several prophets are mentioned in the times of David 
and Solomon, some of whom are distinguished ; in the 
time of Ahab Obadiah hid a hundred prophets by fifties. 
(1 Kings 18 : 13.) After this Jeva's prophets were re- 
duced to Elijah alone, when he killed 450 prophets of 
Baal and perhaps 400 of Ashera (v. 19-40). Subsequently 
we are told of the sons of the prophets at Bethel (2 Kings 
2 : 3), at Jericho (v. 5), and of 50 men of the sons of the 
prophets that went to witness the ascension of Elijah 
(v. 7), 896 B. C. Elijah and Elisha are scarcely less dis- 
tinguished than Samuel. Elisha died 838 B. C, Joel 
and Jonah succeed in 810, Amos in 790, Hosea in 785, 
Micah in 725, Nahum in 710, Zephaniah in 640, Isaiah in 
759-710, Habakkuk in 605, Jeremiah in 629-588, Ezekiel 
in 595-572, Obadiah in 570, Haggai and Zechariah in 
520, and Malachi in 420. 

3. Some of these were men of great distinction in their 
times, others scarcely rose above mediocrity. The pro- 
phetic institution was not peculiar to the religion of Jeva; 
it belonged equally to that of Baal and Ashera. The 
prophets differ essentially from the priests. The priests 
were sacrificers, and served about the temple ; the prophets 
were writers, teachers, preachers, and seers, and served 

6 



62 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

wherever their services were required. The priests were 
hereditary, and their support provided for at the expense 
of the other classes. The prophets were a voluntary- 
class, and provided for their own support either by their 
professional services or by other means. 

4. The Hebrew books of the prophets are all ascribed 
to the prophets generally, none of them to any single 
prophet in particular. Vision of Isaiah in Isa. 1 : 1, words 
of Jeremiah in Jer. 1 : 1, the use of the first person in 
Ezek. 1 : 1, and similar titles and usages in the later 
prophets, do not signify authorship, but the person de- 
scribed as speaking. All these books are anonymous. 
Their authors, however, are divided into two classes: 
earlier and later prophets, and the two divisions of books, 
referred to these two classes of writers. The Plebrew 
books, from the death of Moses to the death of Jehoiachin, 
are referred to the earlier prophets, and the fifteen from 
Isaiah to Malachi to the later prophets. Which of the 
earlier prophets wrote the first, or any part of them, or 
which of the later prophets wrote the last, or any part of 
them, we are not informed; neither is the information 
that we do have certified by any reliable authority ; it is 
an assumption of the Jewish canonists, like the Rabbinical 
ascription of the Pentateuch and Mishna to Moses, and is 
entitled to no credit except as far as it is supported by 
internal and other evidence. 

5. In Story III., 1, Jeremiah is referred to as a prophet; 
but Daniel is never mentioned as such, and was not such ; 
he was neither educated at their schools, nor connected 
with their order. 

6. The prophets among the early Hebrews correspond 
to the sophoi and early religious poets among the Greeks 
of the same period ; both . were expounders of history, 
theology, and morality to the unlettered men of their 
times, and both pressed hard on the mysteries of the fu- 



CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 63 

ture, which they resolved, in the name of superior beings, 
from the past. When the first period of Aramaean letters 
passed, the Hebrew literati dropped the title of prophets, 
and assumed the more modest and humble one of scribes; 
and the Greeks dropped the title of sophoi, and assumed 
that of philosophoi. Both these later titles are now aban- 
doned for literary and scientific men, and designations 
derived from particular arts and sciences, such as histo- 
rians, poets, chemists, geographers, naturalists, etc. 

7. The Hebrew scribes are as much the lineal successors 
of the prophets, as the Greek philosophers are of the sophoi, 
or wise men, and modern literary and scientific men, of 
the Greek philosophers. Prophets were indigenous to 
Palestine, and the institution appears to have been adopted 
by the Hebrews from the Midianites, their relations, 
after the exodus from Egypt. The Babylonians had no 
prophets, and few appear among the Jews after the Baby- 
lonian exile. 

8. The word for Babylonian scribe is Hartum or Char- 
turn, from a word which signifies to engrave, to write on 
some hard tablet, like stone. Babylonian writing was 
performed by cutting and engraving. The Hebrew word 
for scribe is sopher, from a word which originally signified 
to cut, but afterwards to mark with a pen, which was the 
usual method of Aramaean writing. Daniel was a Baby- 
lonian, and Ezra a Hebrew scribe ; neither was a prophet, 
nor is ever accounted such in the books which describe 
their doings. 

9. Scribe first appears as the title of a literary man in 
Jer. 8 : 8, in the passage, " How say you, We are wise ; 
the law of Jeva is with us? Behold, surely the false pen 
of scribes has made it a falsehood." The next instance of 
its use in this sense is in Ezra 7 : 6, where it is said, 
" This Ezra went up from Babel, and he was a ready 
scribe in the law of Moses, which Jeva God of Israel 



64 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

gave." In verse 11 Ezra is further described as "the 
priest, the scribe, a scribe of the words of the command- 
ment of Jeva and his ordinances over Israel." In Neh. 
8 : 1, 12: 36. Ezra is called the scribe, and in 12: 26 the 
priest the scribe. 

10. The New Testament has the corresponding Greek 
term applied to denote the Jewish literati, and finds them 
numerous and influential. Christ often meets with scribes, 
as he does with Pharisees and Sadducees, but never with 
prophets, unless John the Baptist is considered such. 
John was an extraordinary man, and his contemporaries 
called him by the original title of Baptist. Simeon and 
Anna, who, according to Luke, blessed Christ's infancy, 
appear to be fictitious. No prophets were found among 
the Jews in Christ's time, and the Christian church pro- 
duced none who rose to distinction or transmitted instruc- 
tions to later times. 

11. The book of Kings brings down the history of the 
Jews to 550 B. C, 15 years previous to Daniel's apoca- 
lypse of the latter days in Story IV., the last of the He- 
brew Series, and 53 years after the first dream of Nebu- 
chadnezzar. The Later Prophets commence with Jonah, 
810 B. C, and extend to Malachi, 400 B. C, 410 years. 
Several of the books that follow the Later Prophets are 
among the most instructive and valuable in the whole 
series. 

12. If the book of Daniel was written as a narrative of 
facts, and finished in the third year of Cyrus, its latest 
assumed date, 70 years after the date with which it com- 
mences, and 15 years after the conclusion of Kings, it 
ought to have followed Kings, and to have been the next 
book in the sacred canon, unless a still earlier book had 
preceded it. If it was written after Daniel's time, and 
before the latest of the Minor Prophets, it ought to have 
preceded them ; but instead of occupying either of these 






CRITICAL rSTTRODUCTTCTN'. 65 

positions, it is far removed from Kings and all the prophets, 
and placed after eight other books, some of which are 
believed to be more than 200 years later than Malachi. 
Daniel, in being the ninth of the 12 books which follow 
the Later Prophets, completes three fourths of the series 
of those books, and according to that analogy, its time 
ought to complete three fourths of the interval which they 
fill between Malachi and Christ. 

13. Professor Stuart, in his critical history and defence 
of the Old Testament canon, p. 266, states this argument 
from De Wette and others as follows : " No reason can 
be assigned, except the lateness of the composition, why 
Daniel and Chronicles should be placed among the Ke- 
tubim [writings of the scribes], since the first belongs to 
the class of the Later Prophets, and the second, like 
Samuel, Kings, etc., to the class of the Former Prophets. 
The fact, then, that Daniel and Chronicles are joined with 
the Retubim, shows that they were written after the second 
class of scriptural books, the Prophets, were fully com- 
pleted. As this class comprises Haggai, Zechariah, and 
Malachi, Daniel and Chronicles must have been composed 
or introduced into the canon subsequent to Nehemiah 
and Malachi, which was about 430-420 B. C." 

14. To this, Barnes, after Stuart and others, objects that 
the arrangement of the books of the Old Testament by 
the Talmud, and which prevailed among Jews and Chris- 
tians in the time of Jerome, 400 A. D., may have been a 
departure from the original one. He says the Ketubim 
were deemed less highly inspired than the older books, 
and that Daniel may have been removed from the 
Prophets to them, from a low estimate which the Jews 
formed of his inspiration ; but that this was more proba- 
bly done to discredit the book, on account of the use 
which Christians made of it in defending the Messianic 
doctrines of Christianity. (Barnes, Notes on Daniel, 

6* 



66 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION". 

pp. 36-41.) How does all this appear? Where is the 
proof? It is nowhere. Is it not amazing that an accom- 
plished Christian scholar, and earnest seeker after truth 
within the limits to which he judges it to be restricted, 
can reason so loosely? A thousand things may have 
been ; the question is, what toas ? 

15. In addition to the groundless assumptions above 
noted, Mr. Barnes says (p. 37), Josephus "has men- 
tioned the division of the books in his time, and in earlier 
times, in a way to make it morally certain that Daniel 
was not in the third class, but in the second class of 
Prophets," and transcribes the following statement from 
Josephus against Apion, as showing this (I. 8.) : " We 
have not a countless number of books, discordant and 
arrayed against each other, but only 22, containing the 
history of every age, which can justly be credited ; and of 
these, five belong to Moses, and contain both his laws and 
the history of man till his death. This period lacks but 
little of 3000 years. From the death of Moses till the 
reign of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians after Xerxes, the 
prophets who followed Moses described the things which 
were done during the age of each respectively in thirteen 
books ; the remaining four contain hymns to God and 
rules of life for men. From the time of Artaxerxes till 
our present period all occurrences have been written 
down [in the Apocrypha], but they are not regarded as 
entitled to like credit with those which precede them, 
because there has not been a continual succession of 
prophets." 

16. The above, according to Barnes, makes it certain 
that Daniel was not in the third class of Hebrew books 
in the time of Josephus, and in this extract it is necessa- 
rily implied, according to him, that Daniel was then in- 
cluded in the second part among the Prophets. That 
Josephus includes him among the prophets is quite obvi- 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 67 

ous, as he does all the other books except four, which he 
describes as being songs to God and rules of life. The 
books which answer to this description are Psalms, Prov- 
erbs, Canticles, and Lamentations. All the rest, accord- 
ing to Josephus, are works of the prophets who followed 
Moses, and describe things which were done during the 
age of each respectively, in thirteen books. 

17. Here is no transfer of Daniel from the writings of 
the scribes to those of the prophets, but a comprehension 
of all the prophets and all the historic books of the scribes 
in the same division ; but his reference of them to the 
times before Artaxerxes I. is without proof, and is there- 
fore without authority. The times of the authors must 
be determined by evidence, and the opinions and judg- 
ments of men of after ages are no proof whatever on the 
subject. Josephus separates the four poetic books from 
the historic books of the scribes; in other respects he 
appears to make no change in their arrangement. 

18. Let us examine his thirteen books after the Penta- 
teuch, and see what they are. Home, Davidson, Tre- 
gelles, Stuart, and others, reckon them thus : — 

1, Joshua, 2, Judges and Ruth, 3, Samuel, 4, Kings, 5, 
Chronicles, 6, Daniel, 7, Ezra and Xehemiah, 8, Esther, 9, 
Job, 10, Isaiah, 11, Jeremiah and Lamentations, 12, Eze- 
kiel, 13, the twelve Minor Prophets ; and substitute Eccle- 
siastes for Lamentations in the last general division of 
songs to God, etc. 

19. This arrangement is objectionable in the following 
particulars, and cannot be admitted : — 

1. Ruth is not a part of Judges, but a fiction of a late 
period, the scene of which is laid in the time of the last of 
the judges. It has never been connected with Judges by 
the Jews. 

2. Lamentations is a book of songs, and not a part of 
Jeremiah, and has no more connection with it than it has 
with Kings or Chronicles. 



68 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

3. Ezra and Nehenriah are two books as clearly as 
Samuel and Kings, and cannot properly be united into 
one. 

4. No reason exists for making the 12 Minor Prophets 
a single book, which does not exist for making the three 
Major Prophets and all the Later Prophets a single book. 

% 

CHAPTER IV. 

The statement of Josephus analyzed, and harmonized perfectly with 
the present canon and arrangement, his testimony distinguished 
from his opinions, his admissions to Apion, etc. 

1. Part of the statement of Josephus, in his reply to 
Apion (1 : 8), respecting the twenty-two Hebrew books, 
relates to matters of fact which came under his observa- 
tion. Of this description are the number of the books 
and their character as historic or poetic. On these sub- 
jects he had but to observe and discriminate, in order to 
represent the facts correctly, and so far his statements are 
entitled to full credit. Besides, they are supported by 
other collateral and independent evidence. We do not 
receive this information from him alone ; we have much 
of it from other reliable sources, and should have known 
it if he had not written. But this number and descrip- 
tion of the books is peculiar to him ; thirteen after the 
Pentateuch are historic, and four poetic, and all, accord- 
ing to him, are justly entitled to be credited. 

2. Eusebius quotes him (Eccl. History, III. 10) as say- 
ing, that they are justly accredited divine, and is followed 
by Whiston ; but this is an addition to the original text, 
and makes Josephus unnecessarily express an absurdity. 
Strictly speaking, divinity is not predicable of books; 
creation and providence are divine, as are all the works 
of nature, but books are neither works of creation nor 
providence ; they are exclusively works of art and of man. 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 69 

3. It is extremely absurd to exalt an ox or a bullock 
into a god; and yet they are creations of God, and so far 
divine ; but it is far more absurd to exalt a book, however 
excellent or valuable, into a book of God ; God makes 
oxen, but he does not make books ; he leaves book-making 
exclusively to man, and all books are equally human pro- 
ductions. When God makes books, indites them, con- 
trols the minds or directs the hands of book-makers, it 
will imply a change in the divine economy. It is not his 
present method, and as far as we are informed, is not his 
past method. We might as well expect him to make 
houses, bridges, maps, charts, and implements of industry 
and art. He keeps himself to his divine sphere, and 
allows us to fill ours. 

4. The statement of Josephus respecting the Hebrew 
books is, that they consist of five [till the death of Moses], 
and thirteen more [till the time of Artaxerxes I., all his- 
toric], and four books of hymns and rules of life ; total, 
22. His opinions are, 1. that these ought to be credited ; 

2. that the Pentateuch was written by Moses ; and, 

3. the thirteen historic books that follow, by prophets 
belonging to the times of the events and transactions de- 
scribed. In all these opinions Josephus was liable to err, 
and his errors, if he committed such, require to be re- 
judged and corrected. He gives no authority and pro- 
duces no proof of either of them. They relate to matters 
that extended back more than a thousand years from his 
time, and that were as impossible to be known by him 
from observation as by us. If he knew them at all, he 
could only do it by inquiry and research ; and to make 
his judgments reliable, should sustain them with his 
reasons. Not only are these judgments unreliable, they 
are erroneous. The Hebrew books are not all works of 
prophets. Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings may be 
works of the earlier prophets, as signified by their Hebrew 



70 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

title of the Earlier Prophets ; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Hab- 
akkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi may 
be by later prophets, as signified by their title ; but they 
are more probably by scribes who succeeded the prophets, 
and viewed them through the magnifying medium of 
tradition ; several of the books that follow belong to a 
period long subsequent to that of the prophets, when the 
title and office had both been abandoned for those of 
scribes and literary men claiming no divine prerogatives. 

5. The title of Later Prophets is not sufficient evidence 
that all the books of that division were written by proph- 
ets, and yet it is all the evidence we have ; but for this 
we should be authorized to ascribe a portion of them, 
equally with the books of Part IV., to the scribes. Ezra 
commenced the dispensation of the scribes, as Samuel did 
that of the Hebrew prophets, and but for the title of Later 
Prophets placed in the Hebrew Bible over the third 
division of sacred books, we should be fully authorized to 
make the last of them the works of the earlier scribes. 
We have seen in the previous chapter, that the method 
of harmonizing the list of Josephus with the present lists 
adopted by distinguished critics, for the purpose of sus- 
taining the early composition of Daniel and other later 
books, is inadmissible. Let us now see if they can be satis- 
factorily harmonized. 

6. According to the present lists, the whole number of 
Hebrew books is 39 ; uniting the books of Samuel, Kings, 
and Chronicles, the separation of each of which is arbi- 
trary and apparently for the purpose of breaking them up 
into portions of moderate length, we have 36. How can 
this be still further reduced to 22 ? Must it be by com- 
bination, or selection and exclusion? There is no evi- 
dence that any thing ought to be excluded ; the canonical 
authority of all the books is fully established, and cannot 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 71 

be invalidated. It follows that the further reduction of 
the number must be by combination. What shall we 
combine ? What can we combine without violence or 
impropriety ? 

7. We can combine the Later Prophets, and reckon 
them as a single book, unique in character and design, 
relating the memoirs of fifteen prophets, to be compared 
with Plutuarch's lives of distinguished Greeks, with other 
books of biography, ancient and modern, and with the 
dramatic works of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. 
Those Greek masters go further back to the heroic age 
for their characters and incidents, and treat them more 
freely. The Hebrew author makes his personages chiefly 
preachers, and represents them almost exclusively in that 
character, but with considerable variety of style. TTe do 
not find it necessary to assume a different author for each 
of the tragedies of Euripides, and just as little is it neces- 
sary to demand one for each of the prophets; several 
may have proceeded from a single hand. 

8. The Later Prophets are already combined as they 
come to our hands, and named Later Prophets; we have 
only to accept them as a single work, and we have the 
number of books reported by Josephus. With this reduc- 
tion the books stand thus : — 

I. Books to the death of Moses, the Pentateuch, 5 

II. From the death of Moses to Artaxerxes, 
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Later Prophets, 
Job, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, ISTehe- 
miah, and Chronicles, 13 

III. Hymns to God and precepts, Psalms, Prov- 
erbs, Canticles, and Lamentations, 4 

Total, 22 

This embraces all the canonical books, violates no prin- 
ciple of order, is consistent with facts, and is liable to no 



72 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION.* 

reasonable objection. The Earlier Prophets are equally 
a single work, which had become divided up and given 
to different authors before the time of Josephus, and the 
Later Prophets have been similarly divided and distrib- 
uted since. 

9. Josephus ascribes the Pentateuch to Moses incor- 
rectly. It appears clearly from an examination of the 
evidence, that it was not written by Moses, nor till long 
after his times. Josephus is equally mistaken in ascribing 
all the historic books after the Pentateuch to prophets, 
and those written by prophets, to such as lived in the 
times of the events they described. History cannot be 
written correctly by contemporaries ; neither characters 
nor events can be appreciated till a subsequent age sheds 
the light of its developments upon them. Then they are 
understood, and their history can be written. Neither 
the greatly good or evil are fully understood during their 
lives ; it is the inevitable condition of greatness to be only 
appreciated at its full value when it has passed away, and 
the logic of events has resolved in some degree its myste- 
ries. All the great historians of the world have acquired 
their renown by describing mainly the past. The He- 
brews are not an exception to the rest of mankind in this 
respect; if their history had all been written in the times 
of the events and persons described, it would have been 
comparatively worthless. The books of Moses were writ- 
ten long after Moses, and those of the prophets generally, 
as long after them. The statement, therefore, that the 
prophets wrote down what was done in their times in 
thirteen books (to Apion 1: 8), unsupported by evidence, 
and contrary to all analogy, would be entirely incredible, if 
there was nothing to discredit it in the books themselves; 
but there is much. Some of the earlier books after the 
Pentateuch were probably written by prophets, but very 
few of the books appear to have been written by persons 



CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 73 

who belonged to the times of which they treat, and some 
of them extend through several generations. 

10. Josephus reckons Daniel with the 13 books in which 
the prophets wrote down what was done in their times ; 
this would allow him to be the author of his book, but is 
as far from proving that he was such as his similar state- 
ment in regard to Moses is from proving that he was the 
author of the Pentateuch. On both of these subjects Jo- 
sephus concurs in the superficial judgments of his times, 
accepts the most absurd conclusions from tradition, and 
passes them along without a question. These subjects 
were never thoroughly investigated by the early Chris- 
tians, and the Protestant Reformers did not investigate 
them thoroughly. They have since been examined and 
reexamined by the German Rationalists, and many new 
facts ascertained. 

11. Josephus ignores the Hebrew distinction between 
the Earlier and Later Prophets, and also that between the 
Prophets and the writings of the scribes. No harm is 
done by this ; these distinctions are of no importance, ex- 
cept as they mark the succession and chronological posi- 
tions of the books ; but his assigning the books to authors 
"who wrote down what was done in their times," and 
making them all antecedent to Artaxerxes I., or contem- 
porary with him, is a great historical blunder, and shows 
his profound ignorance of the subject. His neglect to 
note the distinctions of the Hebrew Bible proves nothing 
against them. He says nothing of the order of the his- 
toric books, and nothing that indicates a different arrange- 
ment from that of the Hebrew Bible. He allows them all 
to precede the poetic books, and these he seems to sepa- 
rate from the rest out of deference to the scientific meth- 
ods of the Greeks and Romans, who always distinguished 
between prose and poetry. 

12. Josephus received Daniel as a prophet, and treats 

7 



74 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

his book as historic ; but this does not prove that he found 
it among the Prophets, any more than Ezra, Nehemiah, 
and Chronicles, which are never imagined to have been 
found there. The true significance and meaning of 
Daniel's position in the Hebrew Bible were not noted by 
early inquirers. It was left for the moderns to observe 
its inconsistency with the traditionary theory of the age 
and authorship of the book, and to modify their views 
accordingly. 

13. In his Antiquities of the Jews (10. 10. 1-6; 10. 11. 
1-7), Josephus gives an account of Daniel, derived mainly 
from his book, which he treats as historical. He makes 
Daniel and his three friends of the family of Zedekiah. 
This is a mistake. Zedekiah was but twelve years old at 
the time of Daniel's supposed capture, and not of an age 
to have a family. Zedekiah and his family were not taken 
captive till 19 years after the supposed capture of Daniel, 
and his sons were then killed in his presence. (2 Kings 
25: 7.) Josephus makes Evil Merodach reign 18 years, 
when he is succeeded by Xeriglissar his son, who reigns 40 
years. Then, according to him, Labosordacus reigns nine 
months, when Beltazar, called by the Babylonians Xabo- 
andel, reigns 17 years. Under Beltazar, Cyrus king of 
Persia and Darius king of Media make war on Babylon 
and besiege it. Darius takes it, with Cyrus his kinsman. 
This Darius was a son of Astyages ; and Daniel went with 
him into Media, where he honored him very much, and 
set him over his 360 provinces. (A. J. 10. 11. 2-4.) 

14. To be satisfied of the incorrectness of these state- 
ments, we have only to refer to the later work of Jose- 
phus against Apion, where he gives the facts from Berosus 
thus (Against Apion, 1. 20) : Evil Merodach reigned 2 
years, when he was killed by Neriglissar, his sister's hus- 
band. Neriglissar reigned 4 years, and was succeeded 
by his son Laborosoarchad, who reigned nine months. 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 75 

Xabonnedus [Xabonidus], a Babylonian, succeeded, and 
reigned 17 years ; when Babylon was taken by Cyrus. 
Xabonnedus was not in Babylon at the time of its cap- 
ture, but in Borsippa, on the east side of the Euphrates, 
15 miles distant. Cyrus went to Borsippa, and Xabonne- 
dus surrendered himself to him, and was treated with 
clemency; he was banished from Babylonia, but allowed 
an estate in Carmania, where he spent the rest of his life, 
and died in peace. 

15. This latter account is a correction of the former, 
and of the book of Daniel. Josephus follows it, with the 
assertion, " These accounts agree with the true history in 
our books ; for in them it is written that Xebuchadnezzar, 
in the eighteenth year of his reign, laid our temple deso- 
late, and so it lay 50 years ; but then, in the second year 
of the reign of Cyrus, its foundations were laid, and it was 
finished again in the second year of Darius [Hystaspes]." 
They agree so far indeed; but this agreement is with 
other books, and not with Daniel; the book of Daniel is 
silent on these subjects. 

16. Josephus correctly represents the book of Daniel as 
describing Antiochus IV., of the Syrian Greek kingdom, 
by the little horn from the Grecian goat, and his fighting 
against the nation, taking the city, bringing the temple 
worship into confusion, and prohibiting sacrifices 1296 
days. (A. J. 10. 11. 7.) He also describes the other 
prophetic dreams and visions relating to the Greeks, and 
brings down the prophetic history of the world to Anti- 
ochus IV., but takes no notice of the last of the Chakiee 
dreams of Daniel, in which the Roman empire is repre- 
sented by the fourth beast- with ten horns, and the em- 
perors by the little horn, except to say, after describing 
Antiochus (A. J. 10. 11. 7), "In the very same manner 
Daniel also wrote concerning the Roman government, 
that our country should be desolated by them." Any 



76 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

more distinct reference to Daniel's dream of the four 
kingdoms might not have been safe. It presented views 
and encouraged expectations of the speedy and terrible 
destruction of the Roman empire, and must have been 
offensive to those interested in its prosperity, especially 
to its emperors. 

17. Our earliest information of the Hebrew books from 
Christians is received through Eusebius, who was born at 
Caesarea about 270 A. D., and who spent most of his life in 
that city. After the martyrdom of his friend Pamphylus, 
309, he fled to Tyre, and went from there to Egypt, and 
after the persecution subsided, returned to his native city, 
and was made bishop of it, about 314: in 325 he attended 
the Council of Nice, delivered the opening address, sat at 
the right hand of the emperor in the council, made the 
first draft of the Nicene creed, and died in 340. He wrote 
many valuable works, among which is a church history 
from the birth of Christ to the triumph of Constantine, 
324 A. D. He reports the following catalogues of the 
Hebrew sacred books previous to the time of Constan- 
tine : — 

18. I. That of Melito, bishop of Sardis, about 170 A. D. 
Melito went to Palestine, and there ascertained the num- 
ber of Hebrew books from the Jews. This shows that 
he was not previously informed on the subject. He re- 
ports to his brother in a letter which is preserved by Eu- 
sebius. His list is as follows : 1, Genesis, 2, Exodus, 3, 
Leviticus, 4, Numbers, 5, Deuteronomy, 6, Joshua, 7, 
Judges, 8, Ruth, 9-12, four books of Kings, 13, 14, two 
of Chronicles, 15, David of Psalms, 16, Proverbs of Solo- 
mon, which is also Wisdom, 17, Ecclesiastes, 18, Song of 
Songs, 19, Job, 20, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, the 12 
in one book, 21, Daniel, Ezekiel, 22, Esclras. 

19. The translation of this list by Professor Stuart, on 
the canon, p. 432, exhibits a surprising oversight in 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 77 

respect to the one book of the prophets. It compre- 
hends Isaiah and Jeremiah equally with the 12 ; and Eze- 
kiel seems to have been omitted by mistake, and inserted 
out of place after Daniel. Replacing Ezekiel, and reck- 
oning it as a part of the book of the prophets, the whole 
number is 22, not 21, as said by Stuart, p. 259. This 
catalogue was obtained from the Jews in Palestine, and 
the information was then new to the bishop of Sardis and 
his friends. Melito was a voluminous writer on Chris- 
tianity in the latter part of the second century. (See 
Murdoch's Mosheim, vol. i. p. 123, etc.) 

20. II. The second list is that of Origen, first a cate- 
chist of Alexandria, then a resident writer of Caesarea, who 
died 254, in the 69th year of his age ; the most learned 
Christian of his times, and one of the most learned of all 
times. He writes, according to Eusebius, as follows : 
" But one must not be ignorant that the covenant books, 
as the Hebrews relate, are 22, so great is the number of 
letters with them." Then, after some remarks, he adds, 
" The 22 books, according to the Hebrews, are these : 

I, Genesis, 2, Exodus, 3, Leviticus, 4, Numbers, 5, Deuter- 
onomy, 6, Joshua, 7, Judges, 8, Ruth, 9, Samuel, 10, Kings, 

II, Chronicles, 12, Ezra, 13, Psalms, 14, Proverbs, 15, Ec- 
clesiastes, 16, Song of Songs, 17, Isaiah, 18, Jeremiah, 
with Lamentations and the Epistle, 19, Daniel, 20, Eze- 
kiel, 21, Job, 22, Esther." Besides these there are the 
Maccabees. The list is abridged, but not otherwise 
changed, in the above. From this list the Minor Prophets 
are omitted, for which no good reason appears. 

7* 



78 CKITICAL INTRODUCTION. 



CHAPTER V. 



The Apocrypha, different estimates of it by Catholics and Protestants ; 
its value, and its negative evidence against the historic character 
of Daniel and his book. 

1. Apocrypha signifies hidden, and denotes the books 
of Heilenic Hebrews contained in the Septuagint which 
have no existing Hebrew originals. They are as much a 
part of the Septuagint as the translations of the Hebrew 
books, but are not admitted by Protestants to be of equal 
authority with the Hebrew. No good reason appears for 
this distinction ; the Hellenic Jews were neither less wise 
nor less pious than their Chaldee contemporaries. 

2. The Council of Trent, April 8, 1546, admitted Tobit, 
Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Ba- 
ruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Children, 
Stories of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and Maccabees, 
to the sacred canon ; and they accordingly appear in the 
Roman Catholic Bibles. From the Bibles of Protestants 
they are mostly banished. The action of the Council of 
Trent was based on good grounds; the authority of these 
Greek books is equal to that of the Hebrew, and the in- 
formation which they afford is in many cases as important. 
Both are equally human compositions, to be read with 
discrimination and judgment, and both contain documents 
of great historic value. Most of the arguments of Home, 
Davidson, and others, against the Apocrypha, are equally 
valid against the Hebrew books. Such considerations 
prove the books not to be divine, but they do not prove 
them not to be valuable. The Apocryphal books origi- 
nated at Alexandria in Egypt, one of the most celebrated 
seats of Greek learning, during the Egyptian Greek dy- 
nasty of the Ptolemies, and were admitted into the Sep- 
tuagint at the time of its compilation, before the Christian 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 79 

era. They were there, and their authority unquestioned 
in the time of Christ and the apostles, and also in that of 
the earliest church fathers. The Roman Catholics are 
in error, with the great masses of Protestant Christendom, 
in making the sacred books infallible rules of faith, but 
they are not in error in claiming the same respect essen- 
tially for the Apocrypha as the other sacred books, and 
extending common principles of interpretation to both. 

3. The authors of the Septuagint changed the order of 
the Hebrew books, arranging those of a kind together in 
cases where the Hebrew Bible separated them. They 
removed Chronicles from the close of Part IV. and of the 
whole Bible, to the close of Part II., and made them follow 
Kings, and put the other books of Part IV., with the ex- 
ception of Daniel, before the later prophets, interspersing 
them with Apocryphal books and considerably changing 
their order. In some cases these changes appear to be 
arbitrary or accidental. The Major Prophets are placed 
after the Minor in the Septuagint, and Daniel follows the 
whole, after which we have the three books of Maccabees. 
The Septuagint books of the Apocrypha are Esdras, 
Tobias, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, 
Siracides, Epistle of Jeremiah, Prayer of Azariah, Song 
of the Three Children, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 
I. Maccabees, II. Maccabees, III. Maccabees. Susanna, 
Prayer of Azariah, Song of the Three, Bel and the Dragon, 
are connected with the book of Daniel, and reckoned as 
integral parts of it. They are Hellenic additions to the 
previous Hebrew and Chaldee stories, as the Chaldee 
are to the still earlier Hebrew ones. 

4. The Greek books contain no direct information con- 
cerning the book of Daniel; they never describe the book 
nor mention it, nor do they make any certain reference to 
it. Ecclesiasticus, written about 130 B. C, refers to the 
previous sacred books "as the law, the prophets, and 



80 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

others which followed, given after them, on account of 
which Israel is to be commended for culture and wisdom." 
The law seems to denote the Pentateuch, the prophets, 
the Earlier and Later Prophets, and the other books, 
which followed, given after them, the twelve books by 
the scribes, which conclude the Hebrew Bible. 

5. Ecclesiasticus claims to have been written in the 
38th year of Ptolemy Benefactor II., which is about 130 
B. C. (See the Prologue.) The book consists, to a 
great extent, of moral sayings and precepts of morality 
and piety; and in chapters 44-50 celebrates illustrious 
Hebrews and their ancestors from the earliest times. 
The piece is entitled, in the Septuagint, Hymn of the 
Fathers, and mentions the following : 1, Enoch, 2, Noah, 
3, Abraham, 4, Isaac, 5, Moses, 6, Aaron, 7, Phineas, 8, 
David, 9, Joshua, 10, Caleb, 11, Samuel, 12, Nathan (Da- 
vid again), 13, Solomon, 14, Elijah, 15, Elisha, 16, Heze- 
kiah, 17, Josiah, 18, Jeremiah, 19, Ezekiel, 20, Zerubbabel, 
21, Jesus, son of Joseclec, 22, Nehemiah (Enoch again), 
23, Shem (Seth again), 24, Joseph, 25, Adam, 26, Simon 
son of Onias. 

6. A few are mentioned twice, and some out of their 
natural chronological order, as if omitted at first through 
inadvertance, and afterwards remembered and inserted 
out of place. The list extends over the times of Mor- 
decai, Esther, Daniel, and Ezra, and mentions Jeremiah 
and Ezekiel, their contemporaries, but makes no mention 
of them. Mordecai, Esther, and Ezra might possibly be 
omitted, as lesser lights, but the greatest of all the He- 
brews, and the most illustrious of all the interpreters of 
visions and dreams, should have had a conspicuous posi- 
tion in this galaxy ; the greatest among the great should 
not be ignored. The neglect to mention Daniel in this 
song is a strong evidence that his star had not yet risen. 

7. In 1 Mace. 2 : 49-69 Mattathias is described as deliv- 



CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 81 

ering his dying charge to his sons and other friends, in 
which he adverts to the illustrious martyrs and witnesses 
of earlier times as follows: " TVas not Abraham found 
faithful in trial, and it was imputed to him for righteous- 
ness ? Joseph, in time of his distress, kept the command- 
ment, and was made lord of Egypt ; Phineas, our father, 
by being extremely zealous, obtained the covenant of an 
eternal priesthood ; Jesus [Joshua], by fulfilling the word, 
became judge in Israel; Caleb, by testifying in the assem- 
bly, obtained an inheritance of the land ; David, by his 
mercy, inherited a throne forever; Elijah, being zealous 
for the law, was taken up even to heaven; Ananiah, Aza- 
riah, and Mishael, having believed, were saved from the 
fire ; Daniel, by simplicity, was saved from the mouth 
of lions." Here is a recognition of Daniel as saved from 
the mouth of lions ; and it follows the mention of Ana- 
niah, Azariah, and Mishael, who in consequence of faith 
were saved from fire. These references agree with the 
book of Daniel, except that they make Ananiah, Azariah, 
and Mishael precede Daniel ; but they do not authenticate 
the book, nor prove that it was in existence in the time 
of Mattathias. They only say that some Ananiah, Aza- 
riah, and Mishael had been saved from fire by faith, and 
that a Daniel had been saved from lions by simplicity. 
It is more probable that these allusions, and the stories 
in Daniel on the subject, are founded on facts, an exact 
statement of which has not been preserved, than that the 
accounts in Daniel are narratives of facts. It is not im- 
possible that these allusions are hints on which the stories 
in Daniel were constructed. 

8. A distinguished personage, by the name of Daniel, 
is twice mentioned by Ezekiel in terms of high respect. 
In an oracle to the elders of Israel, in Ezekiel 14 : 14, it 
is said, "And if these three men were in the midst of it, 
Xoah, Daniel, and Job, they by their righteousness should 



82 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

save their own lives [only], says Adonai Jeva." Verse 
20 is still stronger: "If ]S T oah, Daniel, and Job were in it, 
as Hive, says Adonai Jeva, they should save neither son 
nor daughter by their righteousness; they should save 
their own lives [only]." This oracle purports to have 
been delivered 594 B. C, four years after the first capture 
of Jerusalem under Jehoiachin, and seven before its final 
capture and destruction under Zedekiah. Daniel was yet 
a young man, and not of an age to be reckoned with Noah 
and Job. Besides, Noah is a diluvial patriarch, and Job 
pre-Abrahamic, so that the Daniel of this oracle ought to 
be previous to Abraham. He cannot, without great im- 
propriety, be a Babylonian exile, and a young contempo- 
rary with Ezekiel. 

9. In Ezekiel 28 : 2, 3, it is said, in an oracle to Tyre, 
"Because your heart is lifted up, and you say, I am a 
mighty one, I sit in the seat of God in the heart of the 
seas, and you are a man and not a mighty one, and you 
set your heart like the heart of God, behold, you are wiser 
than Daniel, and they can hide no secret from you." 
Daniel is formed, like Gabriel, by a combination with el 
mighty one, and seems here to denote an angel of judg- 
ment, whose severe and thorough scrutiny nothing can 
baffle or escape. Daniel is as suitable a term to be the 
name of an angel as Gabriel. This allusion to Daniel 
purports to be in 588 B. C, at about the time of the cap- 
ture and destruction of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, and is 
six years after the previous oracle classing Daniel with 
Noah and Job. The book of Ezekiel belongs to the He- 
brew book of the fifteen prophets, which was not com- 
pleted till after 400 B. C, all of which preceded the book 
of Daniel ; nor is there any thing in these allusions, or else- 
where, to discredit that supposition. But if the Daniel 
of Ezekiel 28 : 2, 3, from whom nothing can be hid, is 
not a supposed god of judgment, or an angel like Gabriel, 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 83 

but a man of remarkable wisdom and perspicacity, and if 
that man lived at Babylon from the third year of Jehoia- 
kim, 605 B. C, to the third year of Cyrus, 535, 70 years, 
it then does not follow, from any thing that Ezekiel says, 
that he was concerned in the transactions related in his 
book ; still less that he recorded them. It would still 
appear that the book is, to a great extent, fictitious, and 
that it was composed long after the times to which its 
incidents belong. 

CHAPTER VI. 

The New Testament authority for making Daniel a prophet, and the 
author of his book, shown to be unreliable. 

1. The Xew Testament is made by many to give sup- 
port and qualifications to the Old, as historic and other- 
wise reliable for the establishment of facts, which for 
transcends its powers. It cannot abolish or reverse tacts, 
or determine questions contrary to evidence ; it cannot 
make historic what is fictitious, give the productions of 
later ages to earlier, or make the personages of allegories, 
poems, and moral tales their authors. To make it contra- 
dict tacts, and sustain false assumptions, is greatly to per- 
vert and misuse it. 

2. To take its testimony, we must consider its char- 
acter and credentials. It is not a simple indivisible unit ; 
it is made up of integral parts, each of which has its own 
independent character. Besides other discriminations, its 
books are of two kinds, considered in respect to authenti- 
cation. Some of them are signed, prefaced, and other- 
wise acknowledged and claimed by their authors, as the 
Epistles of Paul and Peter; and we have only to deter- 
mine that the subscriptions, prefaces, and acknowledg- 
ments are genuine, in order to make the testimony of the 
books complete, for whatever came under the observation 



84 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

of the authors, and also for their opinions. Others have no 
subscriptions, prefaces, or acknowledgments by the au- 
thors, and are attributed to supposed authors, by an 
authority extraneous to the books, and on grounds and 
evidences which are not reported, and of which we can 
form no rational judgment, except the unfavorable one 
of rejecting them as insufficient, on account of their sup- 
pression. Sufficient evidences would neither have been 
suppressed nor allowed to perish. 

3. Daniel is never alluded to by Paul, Peter, or any 
New r Testament writer who authenticates his production, 
and makes himself responsible for it. He is but once 
mentioned in the New Testament, and that is in Matthew. 
Matthew is neither subscribed, prefaced, nor in any way 
acknowledged by the author. The title, with those of 
the other Gospels, is by a foreign hand. The author 
neither gives his name to the work, nor assumes any re- 
sponsibility for the correctness of its statements; he men- 
tions no circumstance and relates no incident by which 
he can be identified. This is not the method of history, 
nor of witnesses testifying to facts. The historian gives 
authorities and proofs, and the witness signifies his pres- 
ence and attention to facts and incidents which he relates. 

4. The laws of evidence are laws of God; and they 
require testimony to be subscribed, acknowledged, and 
certified. Statements that are put forth without respon- 
sible names, are shown by that circumstance not to be 
intended to be received as evidence of facts, but to be 
designed for other purposes. Such a document is the 
Gospel according to Matthew, not by Matthew, nor by 
any known author. A more important document was 
never given to the world, and authorship was never more 
perfectly concealed. 

5. The early Christians took it up, and failing to find 
an author, prudently entitled it Gospel (good news) accord- 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 85 

ing to Matthew, one of the least conspicuous of the 12 
apostles, It cannot be Matthew's; it is not only without 
any attestation and acknowledgment from him, but it has 
none of the marks of a witness and observer who relates 
what he sees and hears. It cannot be by an apostle ; it 
nowhere speaks in the name and with the authority of 
an apostle. The author is some indifferent person, who 
had no observations of his own to record, and claims to 
have none; but he had what is not to be despised — the 
power of representing Christ according to a high ideal of 
intelligence and moral worth ; and he exercised it freely. 

6. Had Matthew written this narrative, and delivered 
it to the world as his testimony of Christ, he would have 
told us what he saw and heard, and what he had from 
the reports of others. In cases cvf importance, where he 
dejDended on information, he would have given us the 
character and qualifications of his informers, and a history 
of the reports he received. - This is the method of He- 
rodotus, the father of history, and of all his legitimate 
sons. A book of his own personal observations and ac- 
quaintance with Christ, by Matthew, telling us what he 
saw and heard, and what he had by information from 
others, and stating the character of his informations, 
would be inestimable, and would dispel many popular 
delusions that have grown up in the absence of exact 
information. 

7. It may be supposed by some, that Matthew pub- 
lished this book with proper attestations and acknowledg- 
ments, as from him, and that they have been lost. This 
is impossible ; such attestations and acknowledgments 
would have been the most important parts of the book, to 
be guarded with especial care, like the names subscribed to 
notes and bonds, the loss of which vitiates the instruments 
and makes them worthless. Testimony without a name 
is like a bond without a signature; it is part of an instru- 

8 



86 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

ment, but is not completed, and is good for nothing ; no 
expedient can supply the defect. The name must be 
there, and the acknowledgment made and certified, or 
the bond is of no force. A bond is an instrument of 
evidence, and proves a promise and assumption of respon- 
sibility; but it cannot prove this without the name of the 
contracting party; it is not completed till it is subscribed 
and acknowledged; and just as little is any book of evi- 
dence completed without similar accompaniments. The 
acceptance of unattested documents as evidence of facts 
is a manifest error. 

8. It was an amazing blunder ever to accept this book 
as a reliable narrative of facts ; the want of a responsible 
name renders it incapable of establishing a fact ; as far as 
it deals with known facts, they can be recognized on the 
ground of the evidence which makes them known, but 
the unknown remains unknown, notwithstanding any 
assertions of an anonymous publication. Whether Mat- 
thew is a narrative of facts, or wholly or in part fictitious, 
are questions to be determined by evidence, and not by 
arbitrary assumptions. Anonymous books may be narra- 
tives of facts, and may be fictitious; they may be wholly 
or in part narratives of facts, or wholly or in part fictitious. 

9. The author tells of nothing that he heard, saw, or 
ascertained by personal observation; he reports no dis- 
courses which he had from one that was present and 
stated only what he heard. Nor are any such found in 
the New Testament. The real discourses of Christ have 
perished ; they were like seed sown in the fields that 
never returns, but vegetates and dies, and reproduces like 
seeds. Christ's words sunk into the minds of men, and 
produced pious and holy lives, and pious and holy men 
spoke for him, and reproduced his words. Thus the good 
seed became multiplied and increased 30, 60, and 100 fold. 
We get no more the exact words of Christ in Matthew, 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 87 

than we do the exact seeds deposited in the earth by the 
former, in the return of the harvest. The old seed per- 
ished, but others of the kind are reproduced from it ; so 
the words of Christ perished, but others of the kind are 
reproduced from them. 

10. The book represents Christ as the highest and no- 
blest ideal of a religious teacher, invested with all the 
powers supposed ever to be delegated to mortals. Others 
were supposed to have supernatural powers, and it was 
deemed right to attribute them to him y others had the 
spirit of God in limited degrees, he without measure. 
The honest representation of Christ by these writers does 
not preclude mistakes as to facts, nor the use of such as 
were known to be fictitious. Fiction is a servant of truth, 
and is not to be confounded with falsehood ; and the hy- 
pothesis of fictitious incidents in the Gospels is liable to 
no a priori objections. 

11. The author of this Gospel writes as a Christian 
deeply imbued with the doctrines of Christ, as they were 
then understood, and able to teach them in attractive 
forms. He copies Mark entire, with few omissions, many 
slight and some considerable variations, and with great 
and invaluable additions. Concerning Daniel, the author 
of Mark said nothing ; but he made Christ speak of the 
abomination of desolation which first appears in Daniel. 
The phrase is indefinite, and admits of considerable 
diversity of meanings. Whatever was meant in Daniel, 
the evangelist makes Christ signify by it the Roman 
eagle borne as a military standard. The author of Mat- 
thew transcribes the passage, and tells us that this object 
was spoken of by Daniel the prophet. His statement is 
as follows : " "When, therefore, you see the abomination of 
the desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing 
in a holy place, — let him that reads understand, — then 
let those in Judea flee on the mountains." (Matt. 24 : 15.) 



88 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

The original in Mark reads thus: "But when you see the 
abomination of desolation standing where it ought not, — 
let him that reads understand, — then let those in Judea 
flee to the mountains." (Mark 13 : 14.) 

12. These statements are important, but they neither 
prove that Daniel was a prophet, nor that he was the 
author of his book. The statement in Matthew proves 
only the opinion of the writer. In his opinion Daniel 
was a prophet, and the abomination of desolation spoken 
of by him is the Roman standard, spoken of by Christ as 
to be set up on holy ground previous to the destruction 
of Jerusalem, A. D. 70. On these subjects the writer is 
only competent to give us his opinion; they did not 
come within his personal inspection and observation. 

13. The author of Matthew makes Daniel a prophet, 
predicting the Roman invasion of Jerusalem by Vespasian 
and Titus, A. D. 69 and 70. Does he represent Christ as 
doing so? Apparently he does; and the two Gospel 
narratives apparently concur in making Christ say, Let 
him that reads understand ; but this is not suitable to 
Christ, nor to a public speaker; it is only suitable to a 
writer. If Christ says any thing of the kind, he ought to 
say, Let him that hears understand. A speaker addresses 
hearers, not readers ; this phrase, therefore, must be re- 
ferred to the writers ; it is evidently by the author of 
Mark, and is copied with the rest into Matthew. The 
words, Spoken of by Daniel the prophet, are by the author 
of Matthew, either as his own, or as a part of the discourse 
of Christ. It determines nothing except Daniel's reputed 
character, and may be compared to Luke 16: 18, "Hear 
what the unjust judge says." We speak in the same way 
of the angel Abdiel in Milton, of Hamlet in the play of 
Hamlet, and of fictitious characters in all works whatever. 

14. The statement of the evangelist does not prove 
that Christ mentioned Daniel the prophet ; all that it 



CRITICAL ESTTBODUCTIO^. 89 

proves, on the supposition that the author intends it to 
be understood as an assertion of Christ, is, that in his 
judgment it was suitable for him to have said it. More 
than this is an unwarrantable assumption. 

15. The New Testament authority, therefore, for mak- 
ing Daniel a prophet, is not the whole New Testament, 
the work of several authors, nor all the Gospels, nor 
Christ, to whom the words are attributed, but the un- 
known author of the Gospel according to Matthew, re- 
porting Christ as speaking conformably to his ideas of 
what it was consistent and proper for him to say, and rep- 
resenting him as the highest conceivable ideal of a reli- 
gious teacher. 

16. Christ founded no school of historic and biblical 
criticism, nor did Christianity reach that stage of develop- 
ment in the times of the New Testament writers; but 
Christ founded Christianity, as a system of truth, historic, 
dogmatic, and moral, and put men on the track of im- 
provements in knowledge that will never be completed, 
because the path of knowledge never ends, and its moun- 
tain summits pierce the infinite. 

17. Christ left both the authorship and character of the 
books of the Old Testament to be studied and determined 
on their evidences, whatever they are, and laid no restric- 
tions on the freest inquiry. Christianity is independent 
of all false assumptions, and spares the supports of the 
superstitions and delusions of ages, without the least 
peril or fear. It is a system of perfect truth and duty, 
and has nothing to gain by delusions or sins, but every 
thing to lose. 

18. Heb. 11 : 33, 34, mentions those who subdued 
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, 
stopped the mouths of lions, extinguished violent fires, 
etc. Daniel is represented in his book as one in whose 
behalf God stopped the mouths of lions : who the others 



90 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

were we are not informed. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed- 
nego are represented in Daniel as persons in whose behalf 
God extinguished violent fires ; in both of these cases the 
book of Daniel improbably alluded to, but no authentica- 
tion of it accomrjanies the allusions, and the author would 
be incompetent to give any. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Chaldee language of the Stories is a conclusive proof that those 
of the Mixed and Chaldee Series are not productions of Daniel, 
or his times. 

1. Language is one of the most reliable witnesses of 
history and chronology, and enables us to solve many 
questions that would otherwise be unresolvable. The 
Hebrew Stories of Daniel have striking affinities with 
Ezekiel, as in the use of the phrase, The beauty, for The land 
of Judea ; Son of man, for Man ; and Clothed with linen, for 
Splendidly clothed. Ezekiel is of an uncertain date, and 
later than the times it represents. 

2. The Mixed and Chaldee Stories agree essentially in 
their language with the earliest Targums, which were 
written about the time of Christ. They have, however, a 
few Hebrew peculiarities, which are wanting in the Tar- 
gums. The Chaldee of Ezra is still more Hebraic in one 
or two particulars, and in others more conformable to the 
Targums. Different authors might exhibit these slight 
diversities in the same age, but they belong more naturally 
to successive stages of language formation. 

3. The biblical Chaldee has been incorrectly supposed 
to be an importation from Babylon at the return of the 
Jews, and to have been the language, first, of Nebuchad- 
nezzar and the Chaldeans, 603 B. C, as reported in Mixed 
Story V. of Daniel, and then of Kehum the Syrian, other 
Syrians, Darius I., Artaxerxes I., and the Persians in 522 



CEITICAL IXTBODUCTIOX. 91 

and 457 B. C, as reported in Ezra. Ezra 4 : 8-16 : 18 
contains a letter from Rehum the Syrian and others to 
Darius I., and his reply, with various historic notices, in 522 
B. G; and Ezra 7 : 12-26, reports a Chaldaic decree of Ar- 
taxerxes, given to Ezra 457 B. C. According to these ac- 
counts, the language of Nebuchadnezzar and the Chal- 
deans was the same as that of Artaxerxes and the Persians, 
and continued, without any essential change, from 603 
B. C. to 457, 146 years. Languages do not always change 
greatly in 146 years, so that the want of any perceptible 
changes to correspond to this interval, is not impor- 
tant. But we have positive evidence that biblical Chal- 
dee was not the language of Babylon and the Chaldeans 
in 603 B. C, nor that of the Persians in 457. 

4. The Behistun inscription of Darius I. is trilingual, 
but neither of its languages is biblical Chaldee, nor is a 
letter of Chaldee found among the inscriptions of Babylon 
or Persia for these periods. The Hebrew language is 
preserved in the Hebrew Bible, and the Chaldee in the 
Tarsrums and Talmuds. Instead of beins; derived from a 
foreign source, the Chaldee is formed from the Hebrew, as 
the English of to-day is from the older and obsolete English 
of 600 years ao'o, and as all modern lan^uao*es are from 
older ones whose stems they preserve. These stems are 
modified by prefixes, suffixes, letters changed for similar 
letters, those representing harsher and less agreeable 
sounds for such as represent more agreeable ones, unneces- 
sary letters dropped, and words contracted, with numer- 
ous additional words from domestic and foreign sources. 
Nearly all the stems of the Hebrew are found in Chal- 
dee words, and prove conclusively the relation of the 
Chaldee to the Hebrew, as its lineal successor. 

5. The Hebrew is contemporary with the earliest Greek ; 
but while the Greek is derived from Aria, in Central 
Asia, the Hebrew cannot be traced with certainty to any 



92 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

remote region. It is supposed to be a domestic product 
of Syria, modified by the Ethiopic and Egyptian. It is 
more probably a slip from the stock of Ethiopia, as the 
Greek is from that of Aria. 

6. The biblical Chaklee is proved, by the earliest Tar- 
gums and other evidences, to have been the vernacular 
language of the Syrian Jews in the time of Christ, and 
hundreds of years later. It was the language of the 
Tyrians, Sidonians, and other nationalities in Syria, as 
well as of the Jews. These circumstances show that it 
could not have been the language of Babylon in the time 
of Nebuchadnezzar. Living languages are never station- 
ary, and dead languages never revive nor recover their 
primitive forms. 

7. Languages are rivers running into the future, and 
finding new tracts through which to pass, but never re- 
turning to their early sources. The Latin once left be- 
hind is left forever ; so of the Hebrew, the Sanscrit, and 
all dead languages. They may be used indefinitely as dead 
languages, but cannot be reanimated. The English of 
to-day is a new product ; it never existed before ; and 
having passed by, as it must, it will never exist again. 
Each language has its age, day, and country ; its day may 
be prolonged, and its country extended, but neither can 
be extended indefinitely. Every past age and every 
considerable portion of the human family has its particular 
language ; the languages of the present world are all dif- 
ferent from the past, and those of the future will all be 
different from the present. Such is the result of divine 
laws ; it does not occur from human design or choice ; it 
is resisted and disparaged by many ; but on it goes, in 
spite of resistance, and on it will go. 

8. In the earliest ages, languages perished, and left no 
memorial to show that they had been. Since the intro- 
duction of letters, they have been preserved and piled up 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 93 

like rocks, one above another. They constitute a series 
of depositions rising into mountains and sinking into 
valleys, like those of the natural world, mark chronological 
epochs, and become the lights of history. What should 
we know of the earth's history if it were not for its suc- 
cessive strata ? The world's dead languages perform a 
similar office, and carry us back to successive periods of 
the past, which we otherwise could never explore. How 
long the human family existed before it invented letters 
and inscribed memorials, we cannot tell. History com- 
mences with the era of inscriptions. 

9. Written language and interpretation are both in 
their infancy, and are destined to be carried to a perfec- 
tion as far beyond what is yet attained as they are now 
beyond their feeble beginnings. The English of to-day is 
a far better language than the English of any past age, 
and that of future ages will be better still. The art of 
interpreting languages, ancient and modern, is more per- 
fect and better understood than it has been in any past 
age, and will be proportionably improved and still better 
understood in ages to come. 

10. To the common apprehension, it is quite unneces- 
sary for languages to die, and when dead their usefulness 
is supposed almost entirely to cease. But this is a mis- 
take ; living languages perform one mission, and dead 
another. Their usefulness never ceases if they are made 
the repositories of documents which are of permanent 
value. The language testimony against the early origin 
of the Chaldee parts of Daniel is scarcely necessary to 
settle that great question, because other evidences are 
conclusive ; but if any inquirers fail to perceive the con- 
clusiveness of other considerations, they will find this 
irresistible. 



94 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Proximate dates of the different parts of Daniel. 

1. Stories II. and III. represent the kingdoms of Me- 
dia and Persia, Greece, and Syria, to the time of Antiochus 
IV. Story IV. relates incidents in the history of Persia, 
from the third year of Cyrus, 535 B. C, treats of Alexan- 
der, 331-323, of Syria and Egypt from 312 to 166, and 
then relates operations of Antiochus which he did not 
accomplish, and after his death introduces a kingdom of 
Michael, a resurrection of the dead, and eternal life on 
earth. 

2. This shows that Part I. was written during the life 
of Antiochus, about 166 or 165 B. C. If the story had 
been a narrative of facts, it would not have stopped with 
Antiochus IV., still less have given him operations which 
he did not accomplish, and have introduced the kingdom 
of Michael immediately after him, with other extraordi- 
nary events. The narrative extends through 370 years, 
and relates things correctly and clearly. After 166 B. C. 
every thing is erroneous, and the expectations indicated 
are of the most extravagant kind, and such as have long 
since been abandoned by most sober thinkers of all de- 
nominations. Story V. in Part II., the Mixed Series, 
commences the line of events in the second year of Nebu- 
chadnezzar, 603 B. C, and carries it down correctly to 75 
B. C, when the Syrian and Egyptian legs of the image 
seen by Nebuchadnezzar had become flattened into feet 
and divided into toes, part iron and part clay ; but mis- 
represents the agent by which those kingdoms were about 
to be subverted. 

3. It makes a stone cut by God, their destroyer, and 
the destroyer of all other human kingdoms, and sets up a 
universal divine kingdom. These expectations were not 



CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 95 

accomplished; no stone cut by God, destroyed all human 
kingdoms, or set up an eternal divine kingdom on their 
ruins. This shows that Story V. was written after An- 
tiochus IV., before Syria was subverted by the Romans 
in 65 B. C, and shows, too, that the account is not a nar- 
rative of facts, but a religious fiction. The indications of 
dates are unmistakable, and need only be well considered 
to carry universal conviction. 

4. Story X. in Part III. represents the four kingdoms 
of Babylon, Persia, Greece, with its four divisions after 
the death of Alexander, and Rome, a power not promi- 
nently noted before. It describes Rome first with its ten 
horns, or two consuls and eight tribunes, — perhaps the 
Decemvirs who made the Roman laws, — and then with 
its little horn of the first ernrjerors, with which it stops. 
Its representations are in the Oriental style of exaggera- 
tion, but otherwise so far correct. It then allows the 
empire three and a half years, and brings down the holy 
ones of the celestial world, consumes the Roman empire 
with fire, and sets up the kingdom of God to endure for- 
ever. Its date is apparently 25 B. C. 

5. There is no internal mark of age in Part IV. All 
that we know in regard to these Greek stories is, that they 
were found in the Septuagint by the early Christians. 
They follow the Chaldee after an indefinite interval, and 
belong to near the commencement of the Christian era. 

6. A due attention to the age of these books is of great 
importance in their interpretation, and ought on no ac- 
count to be neglected. The different ages of the different 
Parts show clearly that they are not the production of a 
single author. One author began them in the Hebrew 
age, and constructed several independent stories, about 166 
B. C. Another, in the Chaldee age, added the first of 
the Mixed Series, about 75 B. C. ; another, later still, 
added more in Chaldee, about 25 B. C. ; and the Greek 



96 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION". 

additions were made still later. The views presented in 
this chapter will receive additional support from the ex- 
amination of the several stories in the commentary. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Character and objects of the Book of Daniel. 

1. There are three possible theories concerning the 
character and objects of the book of Daniel, each of which 
has supporters. The first is, that it is a wicked imposi- 
tion ; the second, that it is a narrative of facts ; and the 
third, that it consists of moral tales, parables, or religious 
fictions, designed to illustrate and enforce moral and reli- 
gious lessons. The truth lies between these; no other 
supposition is possible. 

2. Is it a wicked imposition ? It does not appear like 
one; none of the stories evince any sympathy on the part 
of the authors with wickedness, but the contrary. It 
ought not to be judged to be a wicked imposition without 
reason and necessity, and no good reason, still less any 
necessity, appears for such a judgment. Men have been 
greatly deceived by it ; but this appears to have been by 
their fault, and has not occurred from any wrong in the 
stories. 

3. Is it historic, consisting of narratives of facts? It 
does not appear to be such, and has not the style and 
methods of history. History gives the names of authors, 
cites authorities, and explains the grounds and reasons for 
its conclusions. Nothing of the kind appears in this book ; 
the name of Daniel placed as its title stands in no connec- 
tion with it, as denoting authorship, or attesting its state- 
ments. History records men's sayings in the third person, 
He said, etc., to represent men as speaking and acting, is 
the method of poetry and other fictitious works, but is 
impossible to historians. The use of the first person in 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 97 

the case of Daniel and others in this book, is a strong 
evidence of fiction. Besides, the book does not agree 
with history, and cannot be harmonized with it, except as 
a fictitious work. History is consistent with itself; this 
book, therefore, is not historic. 

4. Is the book a series of parables and moral tales, anal- 
ogous in its character to Paradise Lost and other fictitious 
works, which are written mainly for the illustration of 
principles, and aim only to follow the analogy of facts ? 
It has every appearance and mark of a fictitious work — 
the dramatic style, the absence of all historic authorities, 
the use of names unknown to authentic history, and the 
application of known names to denote persons unknown 
to history, as in the case of Darius the Mede, and the 
description of events as real that, according to the uniform 
laws of God, are impossible. It is a common rule of in- 
terpretation, that impossibilities are fictitious. 

5. Fictitious writers generally follow history as far as 
they understand it, and it suits their purpose ; there is no 
occasion for fiction when historic incidents are at hand, 
as well adapted to the writer's purpose as those he can 
invent. The stories of Daniel might have been con- 
structed much more in accordance with facts than they 
were, if the writer had been familiar with them. The 
capture of Jerusalem might have been placed under 
Jehoiachin, in the first year of his reign ; for Belshazzar, 
son of Nebuchadnezzar, it might have substituted Xabon- 
idus, a Babylonian not of his family ; for Darius the 
Mede, it might have substituted Astyages, the last of the 
Median kings ; but as the Jews were never subject to the 
Medes, some Babylonian or Persian king should have 
been substituted for a Median in the stories to which 
Darius belongs. 

6. It appears clearly that the writers did not understand 
correctly the history of the times in which they laid the 

9 



98 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

scenes of their stories, and therefore departed from it 
farther than they needed to have done. To present the 
subject in the clearest light, the following, with others, 
may be noted as unnecessary departures from history : — 

(1.) The capture of Jerusalem, plunder of the temple, 
and carrying away of a portion of the' Jewish people, in 
the third year of Jehoiakim, eight years before any such 
event occurred. 

(2.) Making Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon in that 
year, when he was not really so till the next. 

(3.) Introducing a Median Ahasuerus, and Darius his 
son, and making Darius conquer the king of Babylon and 
kill him. The first king Darius known to history is Darius 
the Persian, the third king after Cyrus. 

(4.) Making Darius rule over 120 provinces, while the 
Persian empire, in its most prosperous periods, had only 
from 22 to 30 ; and the Median kings were far within 
these limits. 

(5.) Assigning three different times for the end of the 
world, and all of them erroneous. Story IV. puts the end 
of the world, and the establishment of the reign of the 
archangel Michael, immediately after the death of Anti- 
ochus IV., king of Syria, in 163 B. C. ; Story V. places it 
in the latter part of the Syrian and Egyptian Greek king- 
doms, about 75 B. C. ; and Story X., under the first Ro- 
man emperors. More conclusive evidence of fiction is not 
possible. 

7. Men in all ages live much in the past, and the great 
teachers of all nations lay it under contribution for the 
inculcation of the great lessons of piety and virtue. Under 
the Syrian and Egyptian-Greek kings, the Jews were de- 
pendent on the Greeks, sometimes under Syrian and at 
others under Egyptian masters. They preserved their 
nationality, and struggled hard to keep their old time- 
honored ceremonies in credit ; but the predominant Greek 



CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 99 

influence was difficult to be resisted. The Oriental and 
Egyptian simplicity and repose of the Hebrew character 
were disturbed, and traditionary usage was confronted 
with bold and determined questions of the good and 
useful. 

8. The dominion of the Greeks in Western Asia is one 
of the most remarkable illustrations of the divine law of 
order and utility. That small and inquisitive people out- 
stripped the Oriental world and Egypt in the cultivation 
of science and art, and attained a superiority which enti- 
tled them to be masters, and required that the less im- 
proved nations should submit to their rule. The dominion 
of the Greeks in Asia under Alexander and his successors 
was not an accident ; it occurred in the normal course of 
events, and arose from the superiority of Grecian art. 
That was not slight, equivocal, or partial, but pertained 
to the whole field of human action and thought, and to 
matters of the greatest importance. The Greeks were 
preeminent in architecture, statuary, writing, painting, 
music, oratory, poetry, history, dramatic compositions, 
gymnastics, navigation, mathematics, manufactures, ag- 
riculture, war, politics, morality, and religion, in all of 
which they far exceeded all previous and contemporary 
nations. It was fit that such preeminence should com- 
mand, and inferior nations obey. Obedience and subjec- 
tion are the divinely appointed conditions of inferiority, 
and helps to its higher culture. To this general law the 
Jews bowed equally with others; successful resistance 
was impossible. 

9. In this state of inferiority and subjection, the Jews 
were sometimes instructed and served, and sometimes op- 
pressed. They had to contend with Greek masters, and 
the contest was unequal. They were thoroughly Oriental 
in their dispositions and tastes, little inclined to innova- 
tion or improvement. They aimed to carry on society, 



100 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION". 

according to precedent, by despotic authority, and uncon- 
sciously made God in many cases a tyrant and partisan. 
They followed the fathers, thought as they thought, did 
as they did, and were content to be their humble and 
often distant imitators, to the extent of imitating their 
faults. They aimed to reproduce the past, and to per- 
petuate the good that had been, by fixed rules, and, like all 
imitators, fell far short, and added new follies to old ones. 
They invented no liberal or elegant arts, made little im- 
provement in their language, and commanded little respect 
from surrounding nations. Yet, in some of their religious 
and moral principles, they were far in advance of their 
neighbors. They worshipped one God as the supreme 
ruler of all worlds, and a God of righteousness. This was 
their glory ; and locked up in this lay infinite blessings, 
waiting the set time for their broader development. 

10. Besides being compelled to respect the validity and 
superiority of Greek arts, they were sometimes oppressed 
and persecuted, and compelled to defend themselves and 
assail the vices and sins of their masters. They could not 
debate questions with them on equal terms ; they were 
subjects, and the Greeks masters; they were inferiors in 
arts and arms, and the Greeks superiors. Many things 
which they could not denounce directly, they could both 
discuss and denounce indirectly in parables and enigmas. 
It was not practicable to discuss the vices and sins of their 
masters directly, but they did it under the veil of allegory. 
They attributed the vices and sins of existing kings to 
Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, or Darius, some of them real 
kings, and others fictitious, and held them up to public 
contempt. 

11. Their stories do not describe literally the persons 
or times to which they are referred.; both are in some 
cases fictitious ; but they describe symbolically later per- 
sons and times, and in a general sense are applicable to all 



CRITICAL IXTEODUCTIOX. 101 

times. Interpreted as narratives of facts and incidents 
that actually occurred in Babylon or Persia, the book of 
Daniel is erroneous froni beginning to end. Those facts 
and incidents never occurred in those countries ; still less 
did they occur in them at the times specified ; but taken 
allegorically, they represent facts and incidents that oc- 
curred under the Syrian and Egyptian-Greek kings, and 
such as often occurred elsewhere, both in ancient and 
modern times. 

12. It is no disparagement of the book of Daniel to be 
made fictitious; fictitious works are among the most im- 
portant and valuable that have ever been written, and 
constitute the best and most instructive portions of all 
human literature. The Iliad and Odyssey among the 
Greeks, the plays of Shakspeare and Milton's Paradise 
Lost, are among the most valuable of all human produc- 
tions after the Bible, and the fictitious portions of the 
Bible are among the most valuable of the sacred books. 

13. Fictitious books are not necessarily untrue ; fiction 
is an instrument of truth, equally with narratives of facts, 
and is often superior in efficacy and usefulness. When 
fictions are not superior to narratives of facts, they ought 
not to be admitted; and when they are admitted, their 
true character as fictions ought to be carefully noted. 
Any considerable mistakes cannot be made in their inter- 
pretation without greatly impairing their usefulness. 

CHAPTER X. 

Importance of interpreting Daniel correctly; Dark Sayings of the 
Ancients ; Methods of Common Interpreters. 

1. Daniel is one of the standards of religious faith, 
and an incorrect interpretation of it tends to the corrup- 
tion of religion ; it is a monument of the past, and an 
incorrect interpretation of it makes it misrepresent the 
9* 



102 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

past; it is a notation and illustration of the laws and 
methods of God's government, and an incorrect interpre- 
tation of it makes it ascribe to God laws and methods 
which are not his. 

2. The ancients were fond of riddles and allegories, and 
ancient literature abounds in them. Riddles were a con- 
stant diversion at feasts, and the celebrated oracles of 
Egypt and Greece were chiefly allegoric and enigmatic 
sayings. These were long regarded with reverence, and 
studied with attention ; but the last century has consigned 
them to neglect, and most of them are fast passing into 
oblivion. 

3. Sometimes the ancients proposed riddles and dark 
sayings, to be guessed and interpreted as simple trials of 
skill, without any accompanying considerations. At other 
times they were accompanied with stakes, penal condi- 
tions, and forfeitures, and their correct solution made a 
matter of the greatest importance. 

4. We have an example of this in the riddle proposed 
by Samson to his wedding guests, the Philistines of Tim- 
nath ; the stakes were thirty shirts and thirty suits of 
clothes, to be given by Samson to the guests, if they 
guessed his riddle, but to be paid by them to him if they 
failed. Proving incompetent to this task, the Philistines 
would have lost the stake if they had not obtained the 
help of Samson's wife by intimidation. By this means 
they gained the stake, to incur still heavier losses for their 
dishonesty. 

5. The riddle of the Sphinx in Greece is an instance 
of a similar usage among the ancient Greeks. All who 
attempted to solve the riddle and failed, were killed ; 
GEdipus solved it, and killed the Sphinx. The story is 
mythic, and it is not easy to say with certainty what it 
means ; but it refers unmistakably to usages and customs 
which were real. 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 103 

6. Had the stories of Daniel been proposed on the same 
hard conditions as the mythic riddle of the Sphinx, the 
slaughter of unsuccessful interpreters would have been 
dreadful; as it is, incorrect solutions have not been harm- 
less ; but the riddle of the Sphinx has almost found an 
antitype in this book. 

7. The stories of Daniel far transcend the Grecian 
oracles, and the most celebrated riddles of antiquity, in 
the difficulty of their solution, and in the injurious effects 
of the delusions to which they have ministered. They 
have withstood the ingenuity and diligence of eighteen 
centuries and 64 generations, and maintained their credit 
with the masses of Christendom as genuine oracles. They 
have been resolved by a direct reference to God and to 
supernatural illuminations and communications from him, 
and have thereby taught a system of divine procedure in 
dealing with men, which is not conformable to experience. 
Thus interpreted, the past is misrepresented, and men are 
proportionably misled in their estimates of the present 
and future. 

8. The early Church Fathers received the oracles of 
Daniel as they did those of the priests of Delphi or Amnion, 
with unquestioning faith in their divine character, and 
commended them as such to after ages. The Roman 
Catholic Church Fathers followed the lead of the Fathers 
of more primitive Christianity, in giving credence both to 
the oracles of Juclea and of Greece. Luther, Calvin, and 
the other Protestant Reformers followed, in respect to 
the Judaic oracles, the lead of the Roman Catholics. Re- 
cent commentators and critics have generally adopted 
and passed along the opinions of their predecessors, in 
regard to Hebrew and Christian oracles, as if they were 
an end of controversy; and many have contributed to 
their support whatever considerations the superior learn- 
ing and logical acumen of later times could afford. 



104 CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

9. Sir Isaac Newton, after reading the heavens, and 
interpreting the revolutions of the planets around the sun, 
and the secondaries around their primaries, applied his 
genius and art to the book of Daniel, and failed. In the 
kingdom of materialism he accomplished much ; in solv- 
ing the book of Daniel he accomplished nothing, but 
added plausibility and factitious dignity to old errors, and 
extended and strengthened their dominion. 

10. The great English commentators, Matthew Henry, 
Thomas Scott, Adam Clarke, and others, adopt the views 
of their predecessors, and lend the influence of their great 
works to extend the empire of delusion and superstition 
in connection with religion, and fasten their cords on all 
Bible readers. This has been the general course of 
thought and labor, but there is some dissent. The Ra- 
tionalists in Germany, and a few who have concurred 
with them in England, America, and other countries, find 
no essential difference between the oracles of Shusan and 
Babylon, and those of Delphi and Ammon, and reject 
both on the same grounds, receiving them only for what 
they are, and allowing them their legitimate uses. They 
have boldly denounced the common views of this book, 
and other sacred Scriptures, as unsupported by evidence, 
inconsistent with facts, and productive of infinite evil. 
They demand a reconsideration of questions that have 
heretofore been settled on superficial grounds, and a re- 
jection of all unwarrantable assumptions from human 
creeds. They make no war with faith, but . only with fal- 
lacy; and this they fight to the death. Their suggestions 
have received hitherto but little attention, not enough to 
be generally understood. The principal information which 
the public have concerning them is derived from ignorant 
and conceited libellers, who regard them as among the 
most dangerous deceivers. 

11. Truths declared and proved are Titans unbound. 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 105 

and are not easily suppressed ; they domicile themselves 
in the high places of the earth, and assail the abodes of 
the celestials. The Christian Rationalists are supposed 
by many to have been vanquished and driven from the 
field. There cannot be a greater mistake ; they have 
taken new positions of the utmost importance in religious 
science, from which they have not been driven, and never 
can be; and have driven the supporters of old delusions 
from positions of equal importance, which they can never 
regain, and ground is broken for the precious sowings of 
truth, which years to come will cultivate, and the harvests 
of which will minister to the wealth and enlarge the stores 
of all coming ages. 

12. The Rationalists are not beaten, nor silenced, and 
the world has not seen the end of them. The little which 
they have hitherto done is the preliminary skirmish to 
their great battle and world-wide victory. They have 
demonstrated the shallowness of common sophistries, and 
the unsatisfactory character of common traditionary opin- 
ions, and have begun to hold sacred history amenable to 
the laws of all history. It is pitiful, indeed, if that which 
is supposed to be divine cannot stand the tests of the hu- 
man ; it ought to be stronger in all the tests and evidences 
of truth than the productions of man ; it cannot be found 
weaker and acknowledged divine. 

13. The Rationalists have in some cases made the wis- 
dom of councils and conventions foolishness, and exposed 
their cherished principles and valued results to contempt 
and scorn ; but they have impaired the dignity and au- 
thority of no truth, and sapped the foundation of no 
virtue. They have called attention to principles and 
facts, and endeavored to inculcate the Christian lesson of 
building faith on the rock, and not on the shifting sands 
of uncertain opinion. They have shown the difference 
between knowledge and opinion, and given the world 
salutary cautions not to confound them. 



106 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

14. Professor Stuart and Rev. Albert Barnes have 
replied to them in this country, and others in England, 
Germany, and elsewhere, all in the same impotent meth- 
ods; and as yet all are generally accepted by the adherents 
of old fallacies as satisfactory. Future ages will admire 
the simplicity of implicit, unquestioning faith, and the 
power of prejudice, which could blind the minds of these 
eminent scholars to a percejDtion of new truths when fully 
demonstrated, and induce the deluded masses to follow 
them. 

15. The difficulty of following discoverers and other 
teachers in the demonstration of new truths, is well known 
to every learner and every teacher. It is not enough for 
the learner to hear the points of evidence stated, and to 
have the steps of the argument traced and placed before 
his eye — he must hear and consider, he must read and 
re-read, he must observe and look long and carefully be- 
fore the new light breaks on his mind. This is the price 
of knowledge, and the man who will not pay cannot have 
the commodity. But though hard to discover, truth is 
sure to win the field and hold it against the scepticism of 
ignorance and prejudice. The ages are sown thick with 
examples of human weakness and subjection to temporary 
delusions ; arguments that prove nothing satisfy preju- 
diced and interested reason ers, and easily suffice for the 
support of traditionary opinions, while irresistible evi- 
dence of new truth is for a time ignored and discredited. 
The religious works against the Rationalists, with Barnes, 
Stuart, Home, Tregelles, and even Davidson, w r ho en- 
deavors in vain to take middle ground between them and 
the defenders of the old views, are affecting examples 
both of the weakness of human reason under the blinding 
and enfeebling influence of popular prejudices, and of the 
ability of learned and acute men to resist advancing light, 
and disparage and discredit new truth, after it has been 
fully demonstrated. 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 107 

16. The common interpretations of Daniel are all liable 
to the fatal objection, that they either beg their main po- 
sitions, or else support them by evidences that are incon- 
clusive. Such judgments cannot be final; no judgment 
can be final the evidence for which is not irresistible. The 
sciences are all based on irresistible evidence, and admit 
no other. The Rationalists demand the same in all the 
fields of religious inquiry, and the demand is legitimate, 
and must be conceded. The sooner it is conceded the 
better, but the concession cannot be long withheld. There 
is no evidence which may not be ignored, and thereby 
fail of its true effect for a time ; and there is none which, 
on due consideration, can be permanently resisted. Evi- 
dence is born to rule, and its rule is the rule of God. 

17. Till problems are solved, they are matters of debate 
and controversy ; contradictory opinions may be held 
and maintained about the unknown, and be persisted in 
for ages ; but when correct solutions are attained, debate 
and controversy cease. The book of Daniel has been 
the subject of infinite debate, and the most absurd hypoth- 
eses have been accepted and maintained by many in re- 
gard to it, because it has not been fully resolved ; when 
its solution is fully attained, those delusions and debates 
will cease, and the truth alone prevail. The experiment 
has been often tried. Who questions now the Copernican 
astronomy, or the Newtonian philosophy ? In elder time 
the subjects to which they relate were deemed incapable of 
ever being fully resolved, and the world debated over thern 
for thousands of years. Who proposes now to return to 
astrology, necromancy, and magic, those great boasts of 
the ancients? Their very names have become odious. 
Just as little will the more enlightened Christians of 
future ages return to the delusions which are now preva- 
lent, and which are combated with difficulty. The cher- 
ished and venerated errors of ages have, in many cases, 



108 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

been abandoned for certain and salutary truth, and the 
good work of reforming human faith will go on till all 
errors are rejected, and all discoverable truth is attained. 
Invaluable results are already reached which will never be 
abandoned ; truth, once demonstrated, is master of its po- 
sition, and holds it forever ; but the great orb of light and 
king of day is yet to rise on the world, and shed upon it 
the divinest effulgence. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Questioning old opinions no cause of alarm ; infallible interpretation 
and inspiration considered ; certain principles of knowledge. 

1. Many are alarmed at the questioning of old opinions, 
and adopt principles of conservatism and persistent faith 
in religion, that are generally discarded elsewhere, and 
that tend only to strengthen and perpetuate delusions. 
Laymen defer to councils and other church authorities, 
and leave the great questions of religious facts and 
fictions to their ministers and spiritual guides; minis- 
ters and guides accept the accredited opinions of their 
respective orders, and if they find them erroneous, are 
often silent, from their dependence on the favor of their 
congregations and other religious bodies, which are jeal- 
ous of the disturbance of old ideas, and hostile to improve- 
ment as a troublesome innovation. It is an occasion of 
^rave concern to the friends of the human race, that the 
freedom and progress of religious knowledge should be 
restricted and opposed as they are by ecclesiastical con- 
servatism. The evil is immense : if it is necessary, it must 
be submitted to ; otherwise it ought to be corrected, and 
religious science to be as free and unrestricted as secular. 

2. If old opinions are correct, it will do no harm to 
question them ; and the only effect of examining and reex- 
amining their evidences and credentials will be to bring 
them out into clearer view and bolder relief, and give 



CRITICAL IXTRODUCTKXN'. 109 

them stronger holds on the apprehensions of men. Only 
fraud and delusion suffer by inquiry; truth gains by it. 

3. The assumption of infallibility in the interpretation 
of the sacred books by the Catholics is a great error, 
which Protestants have only partially corrected and modi- 
fied ; many have abandoned the supposed infallible inter- 
pretations of the Catholics, to replace them with equally 
infallible interpretations by Protestants. Truth is certain, 
whether apprehended by Catholics or Protestants, and 
whether contained in time-honored and world-renowned 
creeds, or held by its first and sole discoverers. It may 
be resisted and opposed, condemned and rejected, but it 
is certain still. It is the relation of things to the human 
mind, and is as permanent and abiding as the relative ob- 
jects to which it appertains. Things are the conditions, 
of all good and evil; both other things and the mind are 
always essentially the same; their constitutions and rela- 
tions never change ; the white to-day is white to-morrow, 
and the black is black; the good to-day is good to-mor- 
row, and the evil, evil. Things must be apprehended cor- 
rectly, or we cannot adapt ourselves to them. To a limited 
extent, correct apprehension is in our power; we have 
but to make experiment of the actions of things, and find 
what they are ; we make experiment of fire, and find it 
to burn combustible materials, and we denominate fire 
consuming, and materials combustible, from their mutual 
relations to each other. To be correct, we have only to 
conduct our experiments with care, and note the results. 

4. Infallible interpretation is clearly not the prerogative 
of either Catholics or Protestants ; but many correct inter- 
pretations belong to both, and whatever either have ac- 
cepted that is erroneous, is destined to be rejected. All 
Catholics may not become Protestants, nor all Protestants 
Catholics, but both will abandon their errors and extend 
their knowledge, under whatever disadvantages it may 

10 



110 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

be accomplished. Neither has an interest in being per- 
manently deceived, or in deceiving others, but each has 
infinite benefits to gain by the truth. 

5. Beyond infallible interpretation lies the dogma of a 
divine inspiration, that precludes error or mistake in the 
books ; and this, in the estimation of many, gives them 
their principal value. In the works of the present anthor 
all such supposed inspiration is ignored ; it is ignored in 
the interpretation of Daniel, and equally, in that of all the 
other sacred books ; and this is one cause of the remarka- 
ble difference between the results reached in the author's 
works and those generally reported by Christian inter- 
preters. Ignoring a divine inspiration that precludes 
error or mistake in the books, does not imply ignoring a 
reasonable divine inspiration, nor does it necessarily imply 
ignoring a fact ; it only necessarily implies ignoring an 
assumption. Whether that assumption is a fact or fic- 
tion is a question of evidence. It cannot be a fact, be- 
cause it contradicts facts, and the sacred books every 
wbere evince, on the part of their authors, the same lia- 
bility to errors and mistakes as other productions. These 
books put forth no claim to such extraordinary inspira- 
tion, and if they did, it would prove nothing in its favor, 
but would be an example either of error and mistake, or 
else of fraud. The undoubted errors and mistakes of the 
books are numerous, and ought not to be ignored or con- 
cealed ; the true interests of Christianity and of the human 
race require that they should be acknowledged and cor- 
rected, as far as tHe books are used for purposes of in- 
struction and moral culture. 

6. But if the infallible interpretation of the church, as 
held by Catholics, is erroneous, and divine inspiration that 
precludes error and mistake on the part of the writers, as 
held by the great body both of Catholics and Protestants, 
must also be given up, what have we left ? Are not the 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. Ill 

sacred books a cheat and imposition, and is not Chris- 
tianity a delusion ? Not at all ; no more than other books 
are a cheat and imposition because their authors are not 
infallible, and no more than astronomy was a delusion be- 
fore it cast off the Ptolemaic system, or is such with ex- 
isting imperfections. Astronomers were deceived : they 
had not apprehended all the fundamental facts of the solar 
and stellar systems ; but astronomy was the same as now, 
even then partially developed, and waiting the greater 
maturity of the human intellect to attain its more com- 
plete development : other discoveries are still waiting. 
Historic Christianity has a basis as substantial as other 
social systems, and is a great phenomenon of ages which 
cannot be ignored or denied ; dogmatic Christianity em- 
braces the theory of all our moral and theistic relations 
and duties, with much that is correct and of infinite value 
and importance, and with some things that are wrong 
and require correction. The sacred books teach us much 
that is of inestimable value, and Christianity comes to our 
aid in the race of moral culture, with kind and helping 
hands, to cheer us in despondency, to strengthen us in 
weakness, to rescue us from perils, and to crown our ex- 
istence with peace and love. 

7. We are not precluded from committing great errors 
and mistakes, but the merciful Creator does not consign 
us to inevitable delusions or to useless and depressing- 
doubts and fears ; he makes us susceptible of knowledge 
to the exclusion of doubt or uncertainty ; till all doubt or 
uncertainty is removed, we do not know, we only as- 
sume ; but when knowledge is reached, doubt and uncer- 
tainty cease. Knowledge is a mystery; it is a wonder 
that we can know any thing, and how we can know any 
thing ; but it is a much greater wonder how we can escape 
knowledge, and commit the awful blunders that we some- 
times do. We are not consigned to ignorance and delu- 



112 ' CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

sion by any divine destination ; God has hedged us in on 
every side by infallible rules of faith and principles of 
knowledge, and we have but to use our faculties legiti- 
mately to extend our information indefinitely in all direc- 
tions. 

8. The following may be s}3ecified as some of the infal- 
lible principles both of faith and knowledge, and are com- 
mended to the attention of timid and doubtful inquirers, 
but especially to spiritual guides of the people and profes- 
sional expounders of Christianity. It is due from such to 
consider them. 

I. To beg no questions, and accept no unproved assump- 
tions. The rule of admitting nothing till it is proved de- 
pends on the nature of knowledge, as having things for 
its objects. Things must be shown in order that a knowl- 
edge of them may be possible. 

II. To distinguish sharply between the true and untrue, 
the proved and unproved, the determinate and indetermi- 
nate, and between fact and fiction. This requires strict 
analysis, and nothing can be done without it. All reason- 
ing is by analysis. 

III. To resolve objects into their most minute integral 
parts, and determine each part by itself. The correct de- 
termination of compounds and aggregates is impossible 
without determining their elements and integral parts. 

IY. To classify objects according to all their agree- 
ments and disagreements, assigning all agreeing objects 
to the same class, and all disagreeing to different classes. 
Knowledge and classification go hand in hand. 

V. Never to admit the absurd or impossible, but to 
refer them to the fictitious, allegoric, or false, as the sub- 
ject, context, or other concomitants may require. 

VI. To regard things as superior to fancies, and fancies 
as symbols of things. There is no objection to fancies; 
they have their uses, and cannot be spared; they are 



CIUTICAL INTRODUCTION. 113 

among the mightiest implements of human power; but 
they must not be allowed to usurp the place of things ; 
their object is always to represent things. A fiction that 
represents nothing, means nothing, and is useless. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Geographical notices of Chaldrea, Assyria, Syria, Egypt, and the 

Greeks. 

1. Chaldjea embraces the southern portion of the 
valley of the Euphrates, and extends from the Persian 
Gulf, 00° north latitude, to about 34°. The whole country 
is alluvial, and contains about 30,000 square miles west of 
the Tigris. Much of it on the Persian Gulf is quite recent ; 
the average growth of land is about a mile in 70 years, 
and is believed at times to have been much greater. The 
last 40 centuries have added to this alluvium a district 
130 miles long and 60 or 70 broad. Estimating it at 65 
miles broad, its contents are 8450 square miles. The 
whole valley is the product of the present geologic era. 

2. The Euphrates is 1780 miles long, and the Tigris, its 
principal tributary, 1146 ; the Euphrates is navigable 1200 
miles, and the Tigris 1000. Both drain immense moun- 
tain districts, extending to regions of perpetual snow. 
The Euphrates has other large tributaries. The largest 
part of Chaldaea is between the Euphrates and Tigris. 

3. The most ancient cities are Hur, called in the Scrip- 
tures Ur, on the west bank of the Euphrates, in 31° north 
latitude ; Larsa, 30 miles north-west of Hur, on the east 
bank of the Euphrates ; Senkereh, in the neighborhood of 
Larsa; Warka, 15 miles north of Larsa; Niffer, 60 miles 
north-west of Warka, on the east bank of the ancient Eu- 
phrates, but 30 miles from its present channel; Borsippa, 
65 miles from Nirfer, on the west side of the Euphrates — 
its modern name is Birs Nimrud; Babel, 15 miles north- 

10* 



114 CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

west of Borsippa ; and Sippara, 20 miles north of Babel. 
Babel is chiefly on the east side of the Euphrates. 

4. The Burbur name of Hut is Khaldi, which also sig- 
nifies the moon god, the presiding deity of the city. 

Chalclsean originally signified lunarian, worshipper of the 
moon ; then, perhaps astrologer, calculator of eclipses, teller 
of fortunes, etc.; and lastly, a dominant tribe. 

5. The northern portion of the valley of the Euphrates 
and its tributaries, extending from 34° north latitude to 
37°, near their sources in the mountains of Armenia, is 
called Assyria, from the city of Asshur, its earliest capital. 
Asshur is on the west bank of the Tigris, above its junc- 
tion with the Zab, in 35° 30' north latitude ; Calah, the 
second Assyrian capital, is 40 miles north of Asshur, on the 
same side of the Tigris ; Nineveh, its third capital, 20 
miles north of Calah, on the east bank of the Tigris ; and 
Khorsabad, 9 miles north of Nineveh, on the same side of 
the Tigris. 

6. Assyria embraces many mountainous districts, and 
contains 75,000 square miles. The country is varied, and 
portions of it rough. Susiana is east of Chaldaea, with 
Shush an, Greek Susa, for its principal city, and a seat 
of empire under the Persians. Persia is still farther east 
and north, with Persepolis for its ancient capital : Media 
is north of Persia and south of the Caspian Sea ; the capi- 
tal is Ecbatana. Aria, the mother of the Medes and Per- 
sians, and also of the Greeks and other ancient European 
nations, is east of Persia and Media, and extends to the 
sources of the Oxus which empties into the Caspian Sea, 
and the Indus, which empties into the Indian Ocean. 

7. Syria, the ancient Aram, is not to be confounded 
with Assyria; it is the country of the eastern shore of the 
Mediterranean Sea, and the native seat of the Aramaeans, 
so called from its ancient name. It contains about 50,000 
square miles, and its most ancient and illustrious cities are 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 115 

Damascus, Zidon, Tyre, and Jerusalem. Antioch, its 
capital under the Seleucidas, was founded after the time of 
Alexander. It was in 36° 6' north latitude, on the Oron- 
tes, 21 miles from the sea, 60 miles north of Damascus, and 
for a time rivalled Rome in arts and wealth. It was founded 
by Antigonus, one of Alexander's generals, and taken by Se- 
leucus, who changed its name to Antioch, in honor of his 
father Antiochus. Its fortunes have been various ; but it 
is now insignificant, with a population of about 20,000. 

8. The early Syrians are called Aramaeans, from Aram, 
the ancient name of their country, and consisted of several 
distinct nationalities, having common languages and arts. 
Those most known to later ages are the Phoenicians and 
Hebrews. The Phoenicians were the inventors of Ara- 
maean letters, and were distinguished for their commercial 
enterprise and wealth, and the Hebrews improved the 
theory of religion by abandoning idolatry and polytheism, 
and worshipping one God. 

9. Ancient Egypt and Ethiopia occupy the valley of 
the Nile, and divide it as Chaldaea and Assyria do 
that of the Euphrates. Ethiopia occupied the banks of 
the higher Nile, with Meroe for its capital, and Egypt the 
lower, with This, Thebes, Memphis, Diospolis, and other 
ancient cities for its capitals. The Hebrew name of 
Egypt is Mizraim, which signifies the two Metsers, Me- 
roes, or Egypts. Egypt is the mother of ancient arts, and 
carries us farther back than Assyria by 1000 years. 

10. Alexandria in Egypt was founded by Alexander, be- 
fore his conquest of Persia, and designed to be the capital 
of the world. It was the capital of Egypt under the Ptol- 
emies, and was distinguished for its wealth and learning. 
It was the residence of numerous Jews, who adopted the 
Greek language and many other Greek arts. Its cele- 
brated library was the wonder of the ancients, and its 
schools the most distinguished in their times. Under the 



116 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Ptolemies its population was about 300,000. The earlier 
great capitals of the valley of the Nile were Meroe, of 
Ethiopia, and This, Thebes, and Memphis, of Egypt. 

11. The name of Greece originated in Italy, as that of 
Egypt did in Greece. In the earliest times the Greeks 
had no common name, and appear with none in Homer. 
They consisted of independent kindred tribes, like the 
early Hebrews, and were settled in the western part of 
Asia Minor, in the islands of the archipelago, and in the 
south-eastern part of Europe, in the gardens of Asia 
Minor, and of South-Eastern Europe. Their earliest tribes 
were the Pelasgi, contemporary with the Teutons of more 
northern latitudes. They reached their seats by following 
the shores of the Caspian and Black Seas and intermediate 
rivers, passing entirely around the countries of the Assyr- 
ians and Aramaeans. The period of their emigration is 
anterior to the Persian and Median, and is perhaps, with 
that of other European tribes, the oldest of which any 
traces remain. Their development is characterized by 
great freedom, personal independence, and enterprise. 
By a long course of prosperity the Greeks became greatly 
multiplied, extended the narrow limits occupied by their 
ancestors, and established distant colonies previous to the 
conquests of Alexander. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Ethnic and chronologic introduction to Daniel, and to a knowledge 
of its times. 

1. It is impossible to interpret Daniel correctly with- 
out an exact knowledge of the nations and times to which 
the book relates. With this it can be understood, and its 
character determined. But an exact knowledge of those 
nations and times is not easily gained ; they are far back 
in the past; the gulf between the present, and the last 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 117 

date in Daniel, 535 B. G, has a breadth of 2398 years, 
over which it is not easy to pass. The Jews and early 
Christians allowed themselves to be misled by the fictions 
of earlier times, and to our clay many gross and palpable 
errors remain to be rejected, not only from the creeds of 
the illiterate, who make no pretensions to original infor- 
mation or independent judgment on questions of ancient 
history, but also from the strongly guarded and stoutly 
defended positions of erudite divines, critics, and his- 
torians. Both are hard to be corrected, but learned error- 
ists much the hardest. They correspond to the rich man 
in the Gospel whose salvation was represented by taking 
camels through needles' eyes. The task of accomplishing 
it was not easy or enviable. 

2. Ignorance is the mother of errors, and errors are the 
patrons and perpetuators of ignorance. Through igno- 
rance of the times to which the book relates, Daniel has 
been accepted as historic, and hindered the attainment of 
the little knowledge that might have been gained of those 
times. Several kingdoms, and long lines of events and 
incidents, are treated of in the book, sometimes symboli- 
cally and enigmatically, and sometimes literally. Its 
kingdoms embrace those of the Medes, Chaldseans, Per- 
sians, Greeks under Alexander, Egypt, Syria, kings of 
Thrace and Macedonia, the Jews, and the fortunes and 
destinies of the whole world till the supposed end of the 
existing aion, and the commencement of a new social 
order. 

3. The book is a great historic document, and ought to 
be studied and interpreted in the interest of morality and 
history, and with the advantage of all the lights of both. 
It will then acquire inestimable value, and become a cen- 
tral point of illumination and higher culture, with few 
equals even in the other sacred books, and no superiors 
before the New Testament. 



118 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

4. The Medes are a branch of the great Arian family, 
who migrated from near the sources of Oxus and Indus 
to the region south of the Caspian Sea, at an early period. 
The beginning of this migration is not distinctly marked; 
the Medes are not mentioned in the annals of Ziglath 
Pileser I., 1130 B. C, and were probably not in Media at 
that time. Shamas-iva, about 825 B. C, invaded them, 
and obtained a large tribute, and Tiglath Pileser II., 747 
B. C, had frequent wars with them. 

5. .According to Ctesias, the Median kingdom began 
about 875 ; Herodotus introduces it in 708 B. C, as fol- 
lows : — 



Mc 


dian kings. 


B. C. 


1. 


Dejoces, 


708—53 


2. 


Phraortes, 


655—22 


3. 


Cyaxares, 


633—40 


4. 


Astyages, 


593—35 



Conquered by Cyrus, 558. Total, 150 

There was no Ahasuerus, Cyaxares II., nor Darius in this 
dynasty. The Cyaxares II. of many critics from Xeno- 
phon is a pure fiction, inconsistent with facts, and entirely 
inadmissible ; the only Cyaxares of authentic history pre- 
cedes Astyages. 

6. Media first rose to power under Cyaxares ; its pre- 
vious kings were mostly tributary to the Assyrians ; the 
list of Ctesias commands but little credit. 

7. The Chasdim were on the banks of the lower Eu- 
phrates, simultaneously with the Medes on the southern 
shore of the Caspian Sea ; but their origin is not as clear. 
Our information of them is received through the Hebrews, 
Greeks, their own native historians, and the cuneiform 
inscriptions ; but with all these witnesses and reporters, 
their origin is involved in mystery. Homer says the 
Ethiopians were divided, and were the last of men, some 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 119 

belonging to the setting of the sun, and some to his rising 
(Od. I. 23, 24) ; and Strabo makes them the ancient South 
men both of Africa and Asia. (Strab. I. 2, 25, 26.) Mem- 
non, king of Ethiopia, is considered by JEschylus son of 
a Cissian woman of Asia, and by Herodotus founder of 
Susa. Memnonian palaces belong both to Susa and 
Egypt. The Greek mythology connects Belus with 
Egypt ; Khurzistan seems to be derived from an ancient 
Cush, and the most ancient language of the Chaldaean in- 
scriptions combines the Turanian and Hamite elements. 
The earliest known Euphratean people is Ethiopic, from 
the banks of the upper Nile, and the next is Burbur, or 
Chaldee, from those of the upper Euphrates. The two 
were united and blended before the commencement of 
the Egyptian or Assyrian inscriptions. 

8. The lower Euphrateans are frequently mentioned in 
Jewish history ; their country called the land of the Chas- 
dim, and paralleled with Babel. TJr is called a city of the 
Chasdim in Gen. 11 : 28, 1996 B. C. Few questions have 
been more debated, or are the subjects of more doubt and 
difficulty, than the ethnic character of the Chaldaeans; 
many eminent scholars have distinguished them from 
the Babylonians, and given them an origin and seats of 
power on the higher Euphrates. They are mentioned in 
the Scriptures generally as coming from the north, and 
seem to have occupied northern districts ; but it is impos- 
sible to remove them from Babel as their great central 
metropolis. Berosus, a Chaldaean historian of the early 
period of the Ptolemies, applies Chaldaean to denote the 
mythic dynasty of 86 kings, who are supposed to reign 
34,080 years, to 2458 B. C; the second dynasty of 8 
kings, 224 years, he makes Median ; the third of 11 kings, 
258 years, he is supposed to make Chaldaean; the fourth 
of 49 kings, 458 years, Chaldaean ; the fifth of 9 kings, 
245 years, Arabian ; and the sixth of 45 kings, 526 
^ears, Chaldaean. To these are added, from the canon of 



120 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Ptolemy, a seventh dynasty of 8 kings, 122 years, Assyr- 
ian ; and an eighth of 6 kings, 87 years, Chaldaean. The 
whole is as follows : — 

EUPHRATEAN DYNASTIES. 



Dynasties. 


Kings. 


B. C. 


Periods. 


1. Chaldsean, 


86 


36,538 


34,080 


2. Median, 


8 


2458 


224 


3. [Chaldaean], 


11 


2234 


[258] 


4. Chaldaean, 


49 


1976 


458 


5. Arabian, 


9 


1518 


245 


6. Assyrian, 


45 


1273 


526 


7. Assyrian, 


8 


747 


122 


8. Chaldsean, 


6 


625 


87 



Total, 222 36,000 

an Assyrian cycle or aion. 

9. Berosus evidently divides the valley of the Eu- 
phrates, as we have done, into two portions, and makes 
the upper portion Assyria, and the lower Chaldsea. 
They are related to each other, like upper and lower 
Egypts, or Egypt and Ethiopia, with the exception that 
Assyria has the Tigris, a great tributary of the Euphrates, 
in addition to the upper Euphrates, and locates its capital 
cities on it; Ethiopia and upper Egypt have only the 
Nile. The Assyrians are so called from Asshur, their 
earliest capital, on the Tigris, in 35° 30' north latitude, 
and the name of their principal deity ; he was originally 
the founder of the empire, and gave his name and divinity 
to it, as Romulus did to Rome. The origin of the name 
Chaldsean is unknown. It denoted, under the eighth and 
last dynasty of Berosus and Ptolemy, a dominant class of 
the inhabitants in the valley of the lower Euphrates. Its 
Hebrew form is Chasdim. 

10. The sixth Euphratean, first Assyrian dynasty com- 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 121 

mences with Bel-lush and ends with Iva-lush III. ; the 
seventh commences with Tiglath-Pileser II., and ends 
with Asshur-emit-ili. Babel now first presents itself 
prominently to view, and Iva-lush III. calls himself the 
king, to whose son, Asshur, chief of the gods, granted the 
kingdom of Babel. His son Xabonassar founded the first 
Chaldaean dynasty, 747. Its last king is Xabopolassar, 
who, with the assistance of Cyaxares the Median, con- 
quered Nineveh, secured the preeminence for the Chal- 
da?ans, and founded the eighth Euphratean and second 
Chaldaean dynasty, in 625 B. C. The student who is not 
familiar with the wide range of ancient history to which 
the book of Daniel refers, will find occasion for a constant 
reference to the tables in this chapter, in the study of the 
book and of the history of its times. For further, and 
more complete and extensive information, the reader is 
referred to the historical works of Rawlinson, Bunsen, and 
others, but not to the popular commentaries. These are 
generally quite destitute of the lights shed on history by 
the discoveries and researches of the last 25 years. 

11. Eighth Euphratean, second Chaldaean dynasty, at 
Babel. 





Kings. 


B. C. 


Years. 


1. 


Xabopolassar, 


625 


21 


2. 


Nebuchadnezzar, 


604 


43 


3. 


Evil Merodach, 


561 


2 


4. 


Xeriglissar, 


559 


3 6m. 


5. 


Laborosoarchacl, 


555 


9m. 


6. 


Xabonidus, 


555 


17 



Conquered by Cyrus, 538. Total, 87 3m. 

There was no Belshazzar, son of Nebuchadnezzar, in this 
dynasty. Evil Merodach was his son, and Xeriglissar his 
son-in-law. Xabonidus, the last king, was of another 
high family. 

11 



122 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

12. Cyrus succeeded Astyages, the last Median king, in 
558 B. C, and reigned 20 years over the kingdom of the 
Medes and Persians before the conquest of Babel. His 
conquest of Babel brought him into the succession of the 
Euphratean kings, and his reign is generally reckoned 
from the time of this conquest. The previous Euphratean 
dynasty completed the first cycle of 36,000 years, and 
with this reign, reckoned from 538 B. C, a new cycle 
commences. The Persian dynasty is neither Assyrian 
nor Chalcla3an ; the seat of empire has moved eastward. 
The reason of such a change does not appear ; but it must 
be presumed to be that the occupants of the more rugged 
country of Persia had risen to higher and better civiliza- 
tions than the more luxurious dwellers in the Euphratean 
valley : power seeks the nobler ; it deserted the Romans 
for the Goths and other northern races, after having con- 
tinued with them more than a thousand years. 

PERSIAN DYNASTY AT PERSEPOLIS AND SUSA. 



Kings. 


B. C. 


Years. 


1. Cyrus, 


538 


9 


2. Cambyses, 


529 


6 5m. 


3. Smerdis, 


522 


7m. 


4. Darius I., Hystaspes, 


522 


36 


5. Xerxes I., 


486 


21 


6. Artaxerxes I., Longimanus, 


465 


40 3m, 


7. Xerxes II., 


424 


2m 


8. Sogdianus, 


424 


7m. 


9. Darius II., Nothus, 


424 


19 


10. Artaxerxes II., Mnemon, 


404 


40 


11. Artaxerxes III., Ochus, 


359 


21 


12. Arses, 


338 


2 


13. Darius III., Codomanus, 


336 


5 



Conquered by Alexander, 331. Total, 207 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 123 

Only four of these kings after Cyrus are mentioned in 
Daniel, Story IV., 5: Carnbyses, Smerciis, Darius, and 
Xerxes I. There is no Ahashuerus in this dynasty, and 
no good reason exists for confounding the Ahashuerus of 
Esther or Ezra with either Xerxes or Carnbyses. The 
composition and derivation of Ahashuerus mark it as the 
name of a fictitious personage, or a general title of the 
ruling king. It represents the Persian Khsha-ya-thiya, 
with the old article a prefixed, and signifies the king, 
which was the common title of the king of Persia. The 
Dariuses of this dynasty were all Persians, and were mon- 
archs of great abilities ; the first was the greatest of the 
three. Under his reign Babylon twice revolted, and the 
first time resisted his arms two years, when it was sub- 
dued by stratagem. The most important of all the an- 
cient cuneiform inscriptions is that of Darius at Behistun. 

13. Alexander the Great is only referred to in the book 
of Daniel and in the Apocrypha. The historic notices of 
the sacred books after his time would be very incomplete 
without any allusion to him ; and we are thankful that he 
is not ignored. His career is full of instruction, and the 
mightiest lessons of history are illustrated in his achieve- 
ments and fortunes. In early life he was the pupil of 
Aristotle, the master mind of Greece, and showed the 
beneficial effects of his training, in his capacity as a soldier 
and statesman. Had he adhered more fully to the prin- 
ciples of Aristotle, and governed himself in conformity 
with them, he might have been the greatest benefactor of 
his race. But he committed the fatal error of surrender- 
ing himself to the dominion of his passions, and they ex- 
ercised their usual prerogative of plunging him into vices 
and sins, and early terminating his career. 

14. He entered Asia in the spring of 334 B. C, with 
30,000 foot and 5000 horse, and commenced the war in 
Asia Minor, where the Persians were dominant. He lib- 



124 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

erated the Greek cities, and reestablished their democratic 
governments. His first great victory was at the Granicus, 
and the second near Issus, where the treasures and family 
of Darius fell into his hands. In 332 he took Tyre and 
Gaza, and received the submission of Egypt, when he paid 
his respects to the temple of Ammon ; in 331 he fought 
and conquered near Arbela. He then marched to Per- 
sepolis, the capital, which he burned in a fit of intoxica- 
tion. From this time the sun of his glory declined. Da- 
rius was assassinated by Bessus, his lieutenant, in 330, and 
fell into the hands of Alexander as he was dying. Alex- 
ander aimed to unite the Persians and Greeks, and en- 
couraged intermarriages for that purpose. He married 
two Persian princesses, one of them Roxana, the beautiful 
daughter of Darius. He died at Babylon in 323 B. C., in 
the 32d year of his age, after a reign of 12 years and 8 
months. But for his vices, he might have reigned 40 
years. His character was a mixture of all the grandest 
and mightiest elements possible to humanity, with the 
grossest vices of intemperance and their accompaniments. 
The lesson which it teaches is less attended to than its 
importance deserves. Being asked by his friends, when 
near his end, to whom he left the empire, he answered, 
To the worthiest. His half brother Aridseus, son of his 
father by a dancer, and his own posthumous son Alexan- 
der ^Egus, by Roxana, were proclaimed kings by his 
generals, and they took the government into their own 
hands. Perdiccas was, by general consent, appointed 
regent, and the kingdom divided into 33 provinces, cor- 
responding to the number of generals. Perdiccas soon 
fell by an assassin, and Antipater succeeded him. After 
great disorders and numerous contests, in 301 Macedon 
and Greece were under Cassancler, Thrace and Bithynia 
under Lysimachus, Egypt was under Ptolemy, and Syria 
and the East under Seleucus — the four conspicuous horns 



CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 125 

of the Grecian goat of Daniel. The kingdom of Syria 
was gained by Seleucus in 312 B. C, which commences the 
era of the Seleucidge. 

15. Of the four Greek dynasties which followed that of 
Alexander, two are particularly noticed in Daniel, those 
of Syria and Egypt, and great prominence is given to 
Antiochus IV., who reigned 12 years, from 175 B. C. to 
163. Several kings, both of Syria and Egypt, and many 
events before Antiochus IV., are mentioned and described, 
but none after him. The author of the Hebrew series 
considered him the last of human kings, to be followed 
directly by the archangel Michael, the resurrection of the 
dead, and the commencement of a new aion, or cycle, of 
nobler and higher conditions than had before been at- 
tained. The Syrian-Greek kings are Seleucus I., Nicator 
312 ; Antiochus I., Soter, 280 ; Antiochus II., Theos, 261 ; 
Seleucus II., Callinicus, 246; Seleucus III., Ceraunus, 226 ; 
Antiochus III., the Great, 224 ; Seleucus IV., Philopator, 
187; Antiochus IV., Epiphanes, 175 — 12 years to 163. 
Here begins, according to Story IV., the reign of the 
archangel Michael and the new aion. Michael was to 
stand up as the next king. After this, however, we have 
the following series : Antiochus V., Eupator, 163 ; De- 
metrius I., Soter, 162 ; Alexander 1., Balas, 153 ; Deme- 
trius II., Nicanor, 148 ; Tryphon and Antiochus VI., 145 ; 
Tryphon, 142 ; Antiochus VII., Sedetes, 138 ; Demetrius 
II., 128 ; Alexander I., Zebina, 126 ; Antiochus VIII., Gry- 
phus, 125; Antiochus IX., Cyzicus, 114; Antiochus X., 
Pious, 96 ; Demetrius III., 94 ; Antiochus XI., Dionysius, 
86 : the country was visited and overrun by Tigranes in 
83 and 69, and reduced to a province by the Romans in 
65 B. C. Of all this line of kings after Antiochus IV., 
the author of the Hebrew series of Daniel is entirely 
ignorant ; and anticipates no such continuance or termina- 
tion of this kingdom. The author of the Chaldee stories 
11* 



126 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION". 

passes over Antiochus IV. and his times, and represents 
a later period in the Syrian and Egyptian-Greek king- 
doms, but does not dream of their terminating in provinces 
of Rome ; he provides for them quite another kind of ter- 
mination. 

16. The Egyptian-Greek kings are Ptolemy L, Lagus, 
320; Ptolemy II., Philadelphia, 285; Ptolemy III., Euer- 
getes I., 247 ; Ptolemy IV., Philopator, 222 ; Ptolemy V., 
Epiphanes, 205 ; Ptolemy VI., Philometor, 181 ; Ptolemy 
VII., Physcon Euergetes II., 145 ; Cleopatra and Ptolemy 
VIII., Lathyrus, 116; Ptolemy IX., Alexander I., 107 
Ptolemy VIII., Lathyrus recalled 89 ; Cleopatra II. 82 
Ptolemy X., Alexander II., 82 ; Ptolemy XI., Auletes, 81 
Cleopatra III., Tryphaena and Berenice, 58 ; Ptolemy 
XL, Auletes restored, 55 ; Ptolemy XII., 51 ; Cleopatra 
III. and Ptolemy XIIL, 47 : this ancient kingdom, which 
had existed from Menes, 3623 B. C, 1275 years before 
the deluge, through 30 dynasties previous to its conquest 
by the Persians under Cambyses, and had been the 
mother and nurse of human arts, at the death of Cleo- 
patra, 30 B. C, was reduced to the condition of a Roman 
province under a prefect. 

17. The author of the Hebrew series takes little notice 
of Rome. Lie only introduces it as humbling Antiochus 
III., and arresting the conquests of Antiochus IV. in 
Egypt, in Story V. 10, 13 ; but Chaldee Story X. makes 
Rome the fourth of the great powers, and more remarka- 
ble than all the rest. Rome w r as founded by Romulus in 
753 ; made a republic with consuls, 509 ; tribunes were 
added in 490 ; decemvirs introduced in 451 ; consuls and 
tribunes restore cl^ 399 ; the first triumvirate established in 
60 ; Julius Caesar became emperor in 48 ; the second tri- 
umvirate was formed in 43; Augustus restored the em- 
pire in 27, and it continued till A. D. 476 ; total, 1229 
years. Story X. describes the Roman empire in its fullest 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 127 

development as a conquering power, and in the height of 
its glory under the first emperors. Its 10 horns seem to 
be the .ten decemvirs who made the Roman laws, and 
were thus its perpetual rulers, or else the two consuls and 
eight tribunes of the people. The number of tribunes 
varied from two to ten. The little horn of the Roman 
animal in Story X. is not to be confounded with the little 
horn of the Syrian-Greek kingdom, in Story IV. They 
are distinct and different, and belong to different king- 
doms and ages. The Syrian little horn is Antiochus 
Epiphanes, and the Roman Augustus Caesar. There are 
three Messianic kings : 1. Michael the archangel, Story IV., 
160 B. C. ; 2. The stone cut without hands, Story V., 75; 
3. One like a man to come in the clouds of heaven, Story 
X., 25. The confounding of these different kings is one 
of the marvels of credulity ; a reduction of Judaism, 
Christianity, and Mohammedanism to one system, would 
not be more absurd. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Historic notices of the Jews from the close of the Babylonian exile, 
B. C. 538, to the destruction of Jerusalem, A. D. 70. 

1. The return of the Jews to Palestine was freely 
allowed under Cyrus; many, however, remained in for- 
eign countries, and not a few at Babylon and other Eu- 
phratean cities. The celebrated decree of Cyrus, in 
2 Chron. 36 : 22, 23, and Ezra 1 : 1-4, is probably not 
genuine, but is in accordance with facts, and represents 
correctly the generally humane policy of Cyrus. During 
the Babylonian exile the Jews and others occupied a por- 
tion of Palestine, and the former maintained the worship 
of Jeva at Samaria. 

2. On the arrival of Zerubbabel and his company of re- 
turned exiles from Babel, the Samaritans kindly waited 



128 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

on them, declared their sympathy with them, and adher- 
ence to the same religion; and wished to join them in 
building the temple, and to make Jerusalem the common 
centre of their united worship. t This was virtually a pro- 
posal to be one people with them, if they were not already 
such. The proposition was rejected with disdain, and 
the Samaritans repelled. This commenced the Samaritan 
schism, which was never healed. Much evil resulted from 
it, but it has not been entirely unprofitable. The Samari- 
tans represent the older Hebrew body, before the schism 
occurred, and the Jews the later, with its innovations and 
improvements. When they separated they had sacred 
books in common. This is proved by the fact that the 
Samaritans have the Pentateuch, apparently in an original 
form, and that though some alterations have doubtless 
crept into it, the Hebrew, in comparison with it, bears 
marks of a later revision. The fact that the Samaritans 
have only the Pentateuch, proves that the other books 
were not then in existence, and is a strong collateral 
evidence of their late origin. We conclude with certainty 
that the Pentateuch, substantially as it is possessed by 
the Samaritans, was in existence before the separation, 
and that all the other Hebrew books are of later origin. 
The Pentateuch was probably revised and slightly modi- 
fied among the Jews, by the author of the books which 
follow it, shortly after the return from Babel. 

3. The Jewish temple was completed and dedicated in 
516, under Darius I. ; Ezra went to Jerusalem in 458, in 
the seventh year of Artaxerxes I., and Nehemiah in 445, 
in his 20th year. After being absent an indefinite period, 
Nehemiah returned, perhaps in 414, under Darius II., 
when he used extreme rigor in breaking up marriages 
between the Jews and their Samaritan and other foreign 
neighbors, and otherwise consulted for the rigid observ- 
ance of Jewish rites. This jealous separation of the Jews 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 129 

fi'ora other peoples has an appearance of wisdom and good 
policy, but is a departure from general expediency in con- 
formity with that which is partial, and a violation of 
the eternal laws of God, which are known and read by all 
men. Free intercourse of different nations on just and 
equal terms, and unrestricted intermarriages, according to 
the judgment and discretion of the parties concerned, are 
among the most important and inalienable rights of men. 
and no divine sanction can possibly be given to the viola- 
tion of them. God's supposed authorship of such restric- 
tive policies is evidently a mistake ; it wants no external 
evidence to disprove it, but is self-condemned. Malachi 
is contemporary with Xehemiah at his second visit to 
Jerusalem, and concurs apparently in his rigid and exclu- 
sive policy. The Samaritan temple was built on Moimt 
Gerizim, according to Josephus, about 332, the year that 
Alexander took Tyre and Gaza. 

4. The chief priests of the Jews after the exile were as 
follows : Jeshua, later form of Joshua, from which the 
Greek Jesus was derived, 538 ; Joiakim, 199 ; Eliashib, 
463; Joiada, 419; Johanan, 383; Jaddua, 351; Onias L, 
331; Simon the Just, 310; Eleazar, 291; Manassas, 276; 
Onias II., 250 ; Simon II., 219 ; Onias III., 199 ; Jason, 
Greek for Jesus, 175 ; Menalaos, a Greek name, 172 ; Al- 
cimus, or Joachim, 162; Jonathan the Asmona?an, 144 ; 
Simon, 143 ; Hyrcanus II., 79 ; Aristobulus, 67 : Antigo- 
nus, 64; Ananeel, 37; Aristobulus, 34; Ananeel a second 
time, 33; Jesus son of Phabis, 23; Simon son of Boethus, 
23 ; Matthias son of Theophilus, 5 ; Joazar son of Simon, 
4 ; Eleazar, 1 A. D. ; Jesus son of Siah, 5 ; Joazar a second 
time, 6; Anamus, 13; Ishmael, 23; Eleazar, 24; Simon, 
25 ; Joseph, called in the Gospels Caiaphas, 26 ; Jonathan, 
34; Theophilus, 37; Simon Cantharus, 41 ; Matthias, 42; 
Eleoneus, 43 ; Simon son of Cantharus, 44 ; Joseph son 
of Caneus, 44 ; Ananus son of Nebedeas, 47 ; Ismael, 63 ; 



130 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Joseph Cabei, 63 ; Ananus son of Ananus, 64 ; Jesus son 
of Ananus, 64; Jesus son of Gamaliel, 64; Matthias son 
of Theophilns, 65 ; Phannias son of Samuel, 70. Phan- 
nias is the last of the line; the office was abolished at the 
destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, A. D. 70. 

5. Under the Persians Judaea was generally peaceful 
and prosperous, and that interval was the golden age of 
Hebrew literature. Under the Greek, Syrian, and Egyp- 
tian kings, it naturally belonged to Syria, but was often 
held by Egypt ; and Egyptian masters were generally 
preferred ; some of them were not only men of great abil- 
ities, but of great liberality. In 176 Judaea was subject 
to Syria, and Helioclorus, treasurer of Seleucus III., at- 
tempted to rob the temple, and failed, probably through 
intimidation, the nature of which is not clearly apparent; 
it is imputed to prodigies. In 175 Jason, brother of 
Onias III., supplanted Onias, by exceeding him in the 
piice which he paid for the office. Onias gave 360 talents 
($36,000) for it, and Jason 440 talents ($440,000). He 
also stipulated that Onias should be removed from Jeru- 
salem and confined to Antioch, to be out of his way. Ja- 
son favored Greek arts, and bought the privilege of build- 
ing a gymnasium at Jerusalem for 150 talents ($150,000). 
In 172 Menelaos, another brother, supplanted Jason by 
paying 700 talents ($700,000) for his office, and to raise 
the money sold the gold vases of the temple at Tyre and 
other neighboring cities, much to the displeasure of pious 
Jews; and when Antiochus was at Tyre in 171, on his 
way to Egypt, three delegates from the Sanhedrim waited 
on him to solicit redress of this grievance ; but instead of 
obtaining it, they were killed, and Menelaos was continued 
in the king's favor. Antiochus went to Egypt, and con- 
quered it, with the exception of Alexandria. While in 
Egypt a false rumor was circulated among the Jews that 
he was dead, when Jason took Jerusalem with a thousand 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION". 131 

men, drove Menelaos to the fortress, and killed many of 
Lis friends. Antiochns, returning from Egypt, took the 
city, killed 40,000 people, and made as many more prison- 
ers, whom he sold for slaves to the neighboring nations. 
Jason fled, and perished miserably in exile. 

6. In 168, on his return from another expedition against 
Egypt, Antiochus deputed Apollonius, with 22,000 men, 
to scourge Jerusalem again, when he entered it peaceably, 
and on the Sabbath attacked and killed great numbers of 
the people, after which he established a strong garrison 
in the vicinity. He prohibited the worship of Jeva, and 
set up a statue of Jupiter Olympius, the abomination of 
desolation, on the altar. 

7. The same year, after returning to Antioch, Anti- 
ochus commanded all the nationalities in his dominions 
to adopt uniformity of religious worship, and sent over- 
seers into all parts of his kingdom to see this order obeyed. 
Other nationalities obeyed, not excepting the Samaritans ; 
many of the Jews obeyed, and joined the party of the 
king ; and some disobeyed, and were cruelly killed, as in 
other ancient persecutions on account of religion. Apelles 
went to Modin in Dan, in the extreme north-west part of 
the land, to see the law enforced there. He assembled 
the people and addressed them on the subject; Matta- 
thias, an aged priest, son of John, son of Simon, son of 
Asmonaeus, replied that no considerations should induce 
him to depart from the law of his God. One of the Jews 
of the place presenting himself at the altar to sacrifice in 
the manner of the Greeks, Mattathias killed him, and with 
his sons attacked Apelles and killed him ; then calling the 
friends of their religion to follow him, retired with his 
family to the mountains ; others resorted to him, and he 
soon had a thousand men. With these war began. It 
was not at first a war for independence, but for liberty to 
practise the national worship. 



182 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION'. 

8. In 167 Antiochus visited Judaea, and punished recu- 
sants. Mattathias and his company kept themselves in 
the mountains, and when sufficiently strong, visited the 
plains and restored the national religion. Mattathias 
died in 166, and Judas, his oldest son, succeeded him. Ju- 
das was called Maccabaeus ; the nature and object of this 
title does not clearly appear. It is applied first to denote 
the sons of Mattathias and others, and then certain books 
of the Apocrypha which relate to them. Judas fought 
with Apollonius, governor of Samaria, killed him, inflicted 
a great slaughter on his forces, and took their spoils, 
among which was the sword of Apollonius, that he subse- 
quently carried. Seron, deputy governor of part of Syria, 
attacked him, and was also killed, and his army routed. 
Antiochus gave part of his army to Lysias to subdue Ju- 
daea, and went with the rest to Armenia and Persia, to 
confirm his authority in those regions, and collect his 
revenues ; and Judas attacked the Syrian army by night, 
when their general and a portion of his men were absent, 
and vanquished it. In 165 Lysias met Judas near Idu- 
maea, and was routed, with the loss of 5000 men, when he 
returned with the remainder to Antioch. This left Judas 
master of the country and enriched with the spoils of the 
enemy. He marched to Jerusalem, took it from the Syr- 
ians, purified the temple, and reestablished its worship, on 
the 25th day of the ninth month, Kisleu, three and a half 
years after Apollonius had desecrated it. The fortress 
near the temple, however, was still held and garrisoned 
by the Syrians, and guards were posted against it. 

9. Antiochus died in 163, at the town of Tabae, on the 
mountains of Paractacene, in the confines of Persia and 
Babylonia. Polybius tells us that his sickness was at- 
tended with constant delirium, and imputes it to a divine 

; judgment for attempting to plunder the temple of Artemis 
[the desire of women] in Elymais ; but Josephus thinks 



CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 133 

it is much more probable that it was inflicted for his actual 
plunder of the temple at Jerusalem. Antiochus IV. was 
succeeded by his son Antiochus V., ai nine years of age. 

10. Lysias invaded Judaea in 163, with an army of 80,000 
men and 80 elephants, when Judas attacked him south of 
Jerusalem, killed 11,000 foot and 600 horsemen, and put 
the rest to flight. Menelaus died, and Alcimus was made 
chief priest by Antiochus V. Demetrius, son of Seleucus 
IV., claimed the throne, of which he had been unjustly 
deprived by Antiochus IV., his uncle, and Antiochus V. 
was seized by his own soldiers and put to death. De- 
metrius continued Alcimus as chief priest, and resumed 
the war against Judas, who fell before superior numbers, 
in B. C. 160. His brother Jonathan succeeded him, and 
Alcimus died the same year. 

11. Jonathan expelled the Syrians from Judaea, and 
commenced a regular government, after the model of the 
Hebrew judges, and in 144 was made chief priest. After 
a leadership of 17 years, he was treacherously captured 
and killed by Tryphon at Ptolemais, and succeeded by 
his youngest brother, Simon, in 142, who proclaimed the 
Jews free from tribute. From this time the supreme 
power, civil, sacerdotal, and military, was made hereditary. 
Simon ruled eight years, when he was murdered, with two 
of his sons, by Ptolemy, his son-in-law, and succeeded by 
his son, John Hyrcanus, in 135. He completed the war for 
independence in 130, and besides other services, conquered 
the Idumaeans, compelled them to be circumcised, and in- 
corporated them with the nation. This paved the way 
for an Idumaean king in the person of Herod; the Idumae- 
ans and Jews were thenceforward one people, and had 
common rights. 

12. Hyrcanus died and was succeeded by his oldest 
brother, Aristobulus, in 107 ; and Aristobulus first assumed 
the title and insignia of king. He acquired Ituria by con- 

12 



134 CKTTICAX INTRODUCTION. 

quest, and died, and was succeeded by his brother Alexander 
Jannaeus in 106. After many successes and cruelties, 
Alexander Jannaeus died, and left the kingdom to his 
wife Alexandra in 79. She ruled prosperously, but often 
unjustly, with the advice of the Pharisees, till her death 
in 70. Not being competent to hold the office of chief 
priest, Alexandra gave it to Hyrcanus II. in 78. At her 
death, Hyrcanus II. seized the kingdom, but was soon 
superseded by his younger brother Aristobulus II. 

13. The Romans, having conquered Syria in 65, were 
appealed to by the contending Jewish brothers to decide 
between them, when Pompey marched to Jerusalem, 
took it, after a siege of three months, in 63 B. C, and gave 
the kingdom to Hyrcanus. In 47 Antipater, an Idumaean, 
was appointed governor of Judaea, nominally under Hyr- 
canus, but really over him, and held this office till his 
death in 43. In 40 Hyrcanus was taken prisoner by the 
Parthians, and Antigonus appointed king by them, when 
Herod, son of Antipater, fled to Rome, and received the 
same appointment from the Senate. He took Jerusalem 
after a siege of two years, and reigned 32, till 6 B. C. He 
is distinguished from his sons as Herod the Great. Ar- 
chelaus succeeded Herod as Ethnarch of Judaea, Idumaea, 
and Samaria, in 6 B. C, and the rest of the kingdom was 
given to others ; he was deposed in 6 A. D. for maladmin- 
istration, and the country was annexed to Syria under a 
procurator. 

14. The procurators were Caius Coponius, 6 A. D. ; 
Marcus Ambivius, 9 ; Annas Rufus, 12 ; Valerius Gratus, 
15; Pontius Pilate, 26; Marullus, 37 ; and Publius Pe- 
tromus, governor of Syria, 40. Agrippa had previously 
received other possessions from Caligula, and in 41 Clau- 
dius gave him Judaea, and set him over the entire kingdom 
of Herod. The Jewish kingdom was thus revived ; but 
Agrippa died in 44, when it was again annexed to Syria, 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 135 

and subjected to procurators. The procurators after 
Agrippa were Cuspius Fadus, 45 ; Tiberius Alexander, 
46 ; Ventidius Cumanus, 47 ; Claudius Felix, 53 ; Portius 
Festus, d$ ; Albums, 62 ; and Gessius Florus, 6o. Mad- 
dened by oppression, and misled by false and extravagant 
expectations, from misinterpreting their books, the Jews 
resisted the Romans in 69, in consequence of which the 
country was invaded by the Romans, and Jerusalem sub- 
jected to a distressing and protracted siege, and finally 
taken in A. D. 70, and entirely destroyed. 

15. Since then the Jews have been scattered and greatly 
oppressed, but have generally persisted in the erroneous 
and extravagant interpretation of their books. Their 
Talmud is a repository of the results of vast labors, ex- 
pended to little purpose. Extravagant faiths and expecta- 
tions, from a misinterpretation of their sacred books, were 
their great national stumbling-block in the time of Christ, 
have been ever since, and will be, till abandoned. They 
could not accept Christ and his improvements ; he was 
too humble, and his improvements too simple and natural. 
They looked for something greater, and more grand and 
imposing; they demanded marvels and signs from heaven. 
Truth, knowledge, and righteousness, and a God that hides 
himself behind his works, and shines only through his 
creatures, did not satisfy them. They despised God's 
general laws, and demanded specific precepts ; they ig- 
nored general arrangements, and demanded special inter- 
positions. It is not easy to exaggerate this folly. God 
appears to all men, speaks to all, converses familiarly with 
all the good, helps and guides the weak and erring, effects 
great deliverances, and creates great joys. TTe may avail 
ourselves of fictions to illustrate his methods, but we can- 
not help ourselves by taking fictions for facts, and ignor- 
ing the more substantial facts which they represent. 

16. All history is an illustration of divine laws ; that of 



136 CEITICAL LtfTBODUCTIO]N\ 

each nation leaches great and various lessons. The He- 
brews before the Babylonian exile, the Jews after it, the 
Egyptians, Euphrateans, Greeks, and Romans are all on 
the stand to testify, and all have important testimony to 
give. Thehistory of the Jews is especially valuable, and 
ought to be allowed to teach fully its mighty lessons. 
They will make us wiser and better. Though not his- 
toric, the book of Daniel, like the great poems of Homer, 
is one of the most important documents of history, and 
deserves to be profoundly studied. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Notes on Story I. 

I. The scene of this story is laid in the third year of 
Jehoiakim, 605 B. C. This must be fictitious. Nebuchad- 
nezzar was not king of Babylon till the fourth year of Je- 
hoiakim. (See Jer. 25 : 1.) "The word which came to 
Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth 
year of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, which is the .first year of 
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel." The first capture of 
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, noted in Kings, is in the 
eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar, after Jehoiakim had 
reigned eleven years and slept with his fathers, and Jehoia- 
chin his son had reigned three months. (2 Kings 24 : 
6-12.) According to Jeremiah 52 : 28, this was in the 
seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, which agrees with 25 : 1. 
Necho, king of Egypt, had to be conquered before Jeru- 
salem could be taken. Judea was, at this time, a depend- 
ency of Necho, and far within the limits of his empire. 
Necho was conquered at Carchemish, on the upper Eu- 
phrates, at its junction with the Chebar, 36° 31/ north lati- 
tude, seven degrees north of Jerusalem, and more than 400 
miles north-east of it, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. 
(See Jer. 46 : 2.) " Against Egypt, against Pharaoh Necho 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 137 

king of Egypt, who was by the river Pherath [Euphrates] 
at Carchemish, whom aSTebuchadnezzar, king of Babel, 
smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah." 

In Jer. 25 : 3-9 the taking of Jerusalem is represented 
as having been predicted from, the thirteenth year of Jo- 
siah, and not yet to have come. This implies clearly that 
there was no capture of the city in the third year of Je- 
hoiakim. Chronicles agrees essentially with Kings on this 
subject. Kings, Chronicles, and Jeremiah, all concur in 
putting the first capture of Jerusalem under Jehoiachin in 
598 or 599 B. C, and not eight years before, in 606. 

Adonai is the Hebrew word for the Lord, which here, 
as often elsewhere, is used without the article, as a proper 
name. Theodotion, in the Septuagint, represents it cor- 
rectly by Kurios, which is its Greek equivalent, both as a 
common noun signifying Lord, and a proper name of Jeva. 
In this book Jeva is mostly laid aside ; it only occurs in 
Daniel's prayer in connection with Adonai. It is essen- 
tially the same word as the Greek Zeus, and was, perhaps, 
on that account disused by the Hebrews after they became 
acquainted with the Greeks ; words, however, retain their 
place in poetry and devotional compositions long after 
they are disused elsewhere ; and this accounts for it in 
Daniel's prayer. 

Adonai gave all the vessels into his hand. The Hebrew 
Mikzath, here used, is improperly translated in the common 
version, part. Without the points, which are a Masoretic 
addition unknown to fhe ancient Hebrews, it is in constant 
use to signify from or at the end, as At the end of them, 
in verse 2, and At the end of the days, in verse 14. To 
carry away the end of things is to carry away the whole 
of them. This is what is signified here, and corresponds 
to 2 Kings 24 : 13, where the first real capture of Jerusa- 
lem is described; and we are told that the king of Babel 
carried out thence all the treasures of the house of Jeva, 
12* 



138 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

and the treasures of the king's house, and cut up all the 
vessels of gold which Solomon, king of Israel, made for the 
palace of Jeva. The word occurs in the same sense in 
Neh. 7 : 70, where it is mistranslated some, in the com- 
mon version ; and a similar word is similarly mistranslated 
in Gen. 47 : 2. The lexicons and translations are all in 
fault in respect to these words, and require correction. 

II. The selection of the Jewish youth to be educated is 
doubtless fictitious. Josephus, A. J. 10. 10. 1, makes 
Daniel and the three children sons and kinsmen of Zede- 
kiah the king; but they were quite too early for this. 
Their supposed capture was in 605 B. C, when Zedekiah 
was 12 or 13 years old, eight years before he was made 
king, and nineteen before he was taken prisoner, when 
his sons were killed in his presence, instead of being edu- 
cated and promoted at Babylon. 

III. Daniel and his three friends are examples of great 
abstinence. They reject the king's rich food and w T ine, 
and live on seeds and water. This was the diet of the 
strictest eremites and other ascetics during the earliest 
Christian centuries, and is an instance of over-righteous- 
ness, not of genuine religious and moral virtue. Wine 
drinking was allowed by Christ, but prohibited by Mo- 
hammed; it was allowed among the Jews, except the 
Nazarites, and at a later period, the Rechabites. 

Since the sacred books were completed, opium, tobacco, 
Indian hemp, and some other narcotic and stimulating 
drugs, have been added to the list*of luxuries, together 
with distilled spirits, tea, and coffee. The use of tea and 
coffee is nearly universal, and that of tobacco, distilled 
spirits, opium, and other narcotic drugs, extensive. 

Tea and coffee are generally deemed useful ; their use- 
fulness, however, is to be questioned, and ought to be de- 
termined more clearly than has hitherto been done. The 
use of tobacco is believed to be a great evil, and therefore 



CEITICAL INTRODUCTION. 139 

immoral. The same is true of opium, Indian hemp, and 
other narcotic and stimulating drugs as luxuries. The use 
of wines and other intoxicating drinks, many of which 
are stronger and more intoxicating, has been much dis- 
cussed in this country and in England within the last 
quarter of a century. It is attended with great abuses 
and vast injuries to individuals and the public, and re- 
quires to be put under restrictions and safeguards which 
have not yet been adopted. The subject deserves the 
further attention of moralists and legislators. 

The law in respect to food and drinks is, that we should 
use the beneficial and avoid the injurious, and these ought 
to be determined and discriminated with great care. Mor- 
alists have been greatly puzzled in all ages with luxuries, 
and the line of duty in respect to them is drawn with 
difficulty. The principle of pursuing good and refusing 
evil, in the use or disuse of luxuries, is unquestionable, 
but its application is sometimes difficult. Every good 
man will follow the good as far as it appears, and be 
unwearied in seeking it. The physiological objection to 
these excitants is, that they substitute artificial excite- 
ments for natural ones, and divert the vital forces from 
their normal exercise, under intellectual excitants, to an 
abnormal one under material ones. The happiness of the 
subject is not increased, but it is given him without an 
intellectual object. .The injurious character of such luxu- 
ries does not appear in any single use of them, but when 
they are used frequently or habitually, it becomes very 
apparent, and the injuries are often very great. 

IV. The attainments of Daniel and his three friends are 
represented with Oriental exaggeration, but in other 
respects in agreement with facts. The Babylonian liter- 
ati are scribes and enchanters. The first of these terms 
is a natural title of a literary man ; the second originated 
in superstition. Enchantments have no natural connec- 



140 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 

tion with literature, except as they are supposed to belong 
to the higher arts. The first year of Cyrus is 538 B. C, 
making an interval of 67 years between the opening of 
this story and its final date. The assertion that Daniel 
continued till the first year of Cyrus implies that he con- 
tinued only till then ; but Story IV. finds him still alive 
in the third year of Cyrus, and gives him in that year his 
Apocalypse of the course of events till the reign of Mi- 
chael the archangel, about 160 B. C. 

The moral of this story is obvious and striking, and its 
lessons are mainly for the young. A pious and virtuous 
youth, and the adoption of inviolable principles of recti- 
tude in early life, lead to success, prosperity, and honor. 
They enable us to triumph over adversities, and to make 
the most unpropitious circumstances the occasions of our 
advancement. Daniel belongs to a high family, but is 
early made a prisoner, and carried to a foreign and hostile 
land. Neither his courage nor his principles fail him ; he 
remembers his God and his duty, and God remembers him. 
He is singular, but commands respect and love ; he ad- 
heres inflexibly to the right, and his integrity becomes 
the thread of a glorious destiny. 

It seems, on a slight consideration, to be a loss to liter- 
ature to regard the story as a fiction. But it is not ; the 
story is one of those immortal fictions which represent 
truths that are eternal and universal. The ideal Daniel 
represents all noble and manly youth in trying circum- 
stances, and his methods are the universal resources of 
the wise and good. Unspotted purity, unbending recti- 
tude, and invincible determination, are laws of destiny, 
and operate with the same uniformity and certainty as the 
laws of gravitation. Daniel in his youth is the Hebrew 
ideal of a young man making trial of the reality and effi- 
cacy of these laws ; and the truth and importance of the 
creed illustrated are not at all impaired by the fictitious 



CRITICAL INTRODUCTION. 141 

incidents of the story. The single fictitious Daniel of the 
story is a type of an infinite number of real Daniels, who 
act on similar principles in different conditions, and work 
out analogous results. 

The ascetic character of Daniel's piety, considered in 
itself, is a fault, and the story is so far imperfect, and its 
lessons to be received with discrimination ; but considered 
with respect to the times in which it originated, this fault 
becomes a lesson of caution and distrust of human opin- 
ions, and rises to the dignity of a great historic monument, 
marking the steps of human progress in its journeyings to 
the infinite. 



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New Testament; 12mo, pages 324. In muslin, $1.25; in mo- 
rocco, $1.50. 

3. The Hebrew Poets, embracing Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canti- 
cles, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes, with Notes on the Books ; 
12mo, pages 348. In muslin, $1.25 ; in morocco, $1.50. 

4. Reconstruction of Biblical Theories for the early sacred books, 
or Biblical Science improved in its history, chronology, and inter- 
pretation ; 12mo, pages 195 ; in muslin, 75c. 

5. Daniel, with its Apocryphal additions, translated, arranged, 
and the principal questions of its interpretation considered ; 12mo, 
pages 144 ; in muslin, 75c. 

These works are published in uniform styles, on good paper, 
and substantially bound. They are distinctively American and pro- 
gressive, and represent the latest results reached by scholars in 
the several departments of Biblical Science, in respect to the text 
of the New Testament, and the history and interpretation of both 
Testaments. They contain valuable improvements on king James 
and the popular commentaries of the day, and inaugurate a new 
era of biblical interpretation and criticism, corresponding to the 
advanced state of the other sciences and liberal arts. 

(142) 



NOTICE BY THE PUBLISHEKS. 143 

I. The New Testament and Prophets are chiefly translations, 
accompanied with little discussion of the books. Their further 
examination is reserved for independent works, and is to be com- 
menced in our next volume. The translations represent the 
originals with a degree of clearness, precision, and uniformity not 
heretofore attained, and are designed to accompany both the com- 
mon version and the originals, as helps to biblical study. 

II. The Hebrew Poets contains discussions of the books, with 
examinations of their age, origin, objects, and interpretation. The 
Reconstruction of Biblical Theories relates chiefly to the interpre- 
tation of the earlier Hebrew books, and finds large portions of 
them allegoric and fictitious, without, however, derogating from 
their dignity and value, but rather enhancing both. It regards 
them as invaluable records and monuments of the distant past, 
and interprets them according to then* true import, in agreement 
with facts by the established and general laws of language. This 
volume appeared slightly in advance of Bishop Colenso's publica- 
tions on the Pentateuch ; and while it equally rejects the infallible 
inspiration of the documents, makes contributions to their correct 
interpretation, far in advance of Colenso's, and claims attention as 
suggesting new and important points of inquiry, and proposing new 
issues in sacred history and chronology. 

III. The volume on Daniel analyzes the book more thoroughly 
than has been done heretofore, arranges the stories according to 
their languages, determines their ages and objects, and resolves 
their principal mysteries. It is believed that many of its determi- 
nations and solutions will be final, and that the field of debate aver 
this book hereafter, will be considerably circumscribed. The mis- , 
understanding of it has been the occasion of vast injury both to 
Jews and Christians, and the solution of its principal difficulties 
on scientific grounds, will compel concurrence, and confer invalua- 
ble benefits both on the Jewish and Christian world. 

TV. Each of these volumes is complete in itself, and all together 
constitute a select library of theological and biblical science. They 



144 NOTICE BY THE PUBLISHERS. 

are commended to professional scholars and Christian ministers, 
as repositories of much valuable information, and as much needed 
helps in Christian culture. They are commended to the people 
generally, for whose benefit they are chiefly prepared, in the be- 
lief that candid and pious readers of all orders, will find them valu- 
able aids to biblical study and soul culture, and at no distant 
period give them a place by the common Bible, as indispensable 
accompaniments of that revered volume. 

V. These volumes partake largely of the spirit of the times, 
and are the offspring of the age ; they propose great reforms 
and great progress, and depart widely from old and accepted 
ideas, but are believed to be faithful to God and truth, and 
are sustained, in their essential positions, by invincible evidence. 
They beg no questions, and accept no unproved assumptions ; but 
challenge scrutiny and court examination. No man need be long 
in doubt, or be deceived over them ; they have only to be read and 
subjected to theoretical and practical tests to have their usefulness 
undeniably and generally appear. 

Published by Walker, Wise & Co., 245 Washington Street. 

Boston, January 1, 1864. 




This Quarterly is designed to be independent and 
unsectarian, and to deal mainly and freely with funda- 
mental and radical questions. It will contain trans- 
lations and discussions of the sacred books, both of the 
Old Testament and New. No. II. will commence 
the examination of the New Testament. Each number 
will be as far as possible complete in itself. 

Terms, $2 a year, in advance ; single copies 63 cts. 
Subscriptions and orders are respectfully solicited. 

Address, 

LEICESTER A. SAWYER, 

BOSTON, 



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